Please note: this event has passed
This event will be hosted virtually via Microsoft Teams Meetings. Please register to receive the link.
The event will be convened by Matthew Canfield, Van Vollenhoven Institute, Leiden University.
Event abstract
The spread of COVID-19 has exacerbated global food insecurity. Even before the crisis, an estimated 700 million people faced severe food insecurity, with another 1.3 billion facing moderate food insecurity. Now that number is poised to grow. Disruptions to food supply chains coupled with economic distress due to unemployment have aggregated problems of food access globally. Poor and marginalized communities are those experiencing the most acute effects, with women and girls facing the most severe impacts including increased domestic violence and additional workload as a result of lockdowns. Yet like all famines and food crises, the problem is not due to inadequate food production, but rather the political and economic systems through which food is produced and provisioned.
This TLI Focus Seminar examines the effects of COVID-19 on the global food system, and their implications for the future of global food security governance: What limitations, challenges, or failures does COVID-19 reveal about the current system of global food governance? What institutions, mechanisms, and international legal norms should be mobilized to guide and manage a global policy response? What lessons can be learned from the 2007-2008 food crisis? And, how must global food governance be transformed to facilitate a more equitable and ecologically sustainable food system?
Event speakers
• Dr. Michael Fakhri - UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Associate Professor, University of Oregon School of Law
• Dr. Jessica Duncan – Associate Professor of Rural Sociology, Wageningen University
• Dr. Priscilla Claeys – Associate Professor, Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, Coventry University
• Dr. William Moseley – DeWitt Wallace Professor of Geography, Macalester College
• Stefano Prato – Managing Director, Society for International Development
• Shalmali Guttal – Executive Director, Focus on the Global South