FAO urges all its Members & partners to join the Global Alliance against Hunger & Poverty | FAO News

Rio de Janeiro – The Director-General of the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), QU Dongyu, today urged all FAO Members & partners to join the new Global Alliance Against Hunger & Poverty, which was officially launched today at the G20 Leader’s Summit in Brazil.

The Global Alliance Against Hunger & Poverty, an initiative crafted by the Brazilian presidency of the G20, aims to offer an ambitious & urgent platform for accelerating progress towards achieving the international pledges of eradicating poverty & hunger by 2030 (Sustainable Development Goals 1 & 2) as well as to reduce inequalities (SDG 10).

Speaking at a special session of the G20 Summit on the Fight against Hunger & Poverty, Qu commended the Government of Brazil & President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for his personal commitment in bringing hunger, poverty & inequality reduction to the centre of the G20 discussions, with a concrete initiative & actions to support it.

“Achieving zero hunger is possible,” Qu Dongyu said. “It requires even stronger collective efforts & strategies to address the economic, environmental, social & institutional challenges that perpetuate poverty & hunger,” he added.

FAO joined the Global Alliance as a founding member along with other UN agencies, governments, international financial institutions philanthropic foundations & knowledge institutions.

FAO’s role in Global Alliance

Qu highlighted that FAO will host the Support Mechanism of the Global Alliance from the Organization’s headquarters in Rome, in close collaboration with other UN agencies & international financial institutions. The enabling mechanism aims to help optimize the three pillars – knowledge, finance & action – at the country level.

The FAO Director-General noted that the fundamental principle at the heart of the Global Alliance is the power of collective action to support implementation of evidence-based policy instruments & to support efficiencies & complementarities in coordinated financing for real, measurable progress at country level to eradicate hunger & poverty.

FAO will provide technical assistance to implementing countries, putting its considerable comparative advantage in knowledge about food security & inclusive rural development at their disposal, with the goal of bringing knowledge, expertise & best-practice examples to the parts of the world where they are most needed.

The alliance will have a policy basket that brings together successful policies that have achieved impact at scale on eradication poverty & hunger. FAO has contributed extensively to most of the 50 policy instruments identified so far, which range from cash transfer & job guarantee schemes to ways to ensure inclusive finance & credit, so smallholder farmers can access climate-smart technologies, for example.

The Global Alliance entails six “sprints”, which are seen as high-impact areas for early action. They include: School Meals; Cash Transfers; Smallholder & family farming support programs; Socio-economic inclusion programs; Integrated maternal & early childhood interventions; & Water access solutions.

FAO, for example, intends to leverage 128 current programme interventions supporting small-scale producers across all regions to supporting one of the Global Alliance’s “sprint” channels to support smallholder farmers.

Hunger reduction & poverty eradication efforts have been slowed down by the uneven economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, conflicts, impacts of the climate  crisis & other causes. Around 733 million people or 9.1 percent of the world population faces chronic hunger & around 2.8 billion people could not afford a healthy diet, according to the latest FAO estimates.

The Director-General has sought to bring FAO’s work with the G7, with the COP summits (COP16 & COP29) & most recently at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru to support the G20’s Global Alliance.

The Alliance “promotes collective action even beyond G20 members” & is a very important mechanism supporting FAO’s efforts to achieve its mandate, he said.