New York Climate Week 2024: Spotlight on Food Systems
New York Climate Week 2024, scheduled from September 22-29, 2024, promises to be a critical…
Thursday, 10 November at 14:30 – 15:30
FAO, CGIAR, Rockefeller Pavilion
Objectives
This side event aims to:
Names and affiliations of speakers
Moderator: Mr. Zitouni Ould-Dada, FAO
Dr. Ahmed Nasr-Allah, Country Director, WorldFish Egypt
Mr. Jay Waldvogel, Vice-President, Dairy Farmers of America
Prof. Leonardus Vergütz, Chair in Soil Science, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University
Mr. Ross Hampton, CEO Australian Forest Products Association
Ms. Robynne Anderson, Director General of International Agri-Food Network
Background
Climate change is a fundamental threat to sustainable development. Its impacts cut across boundaries and across dimensions – including the political, economic, and social – with strong linkages to issues such as health, food/nutrition, consumption, water security, livelihood, and energy transformation. Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires a deep and bold transformation to produce food systems that are inclusive, resilient, sustainable, efficient, nutritious, and healthy.
Achieving this transformation will depend on the ability to innovate in a way that is broad, inclusive and encompasses all of society. This calls for a diverse group of actors representing public, private, social sector innovation partners in a commitment to make innovation a significant enabling factor for food systems transformation.
Triangular co-operation can help to achieve the SDGs in innovative and collaborative ways and can provide solutions to overcome today’s most pressing environmental, economic and social challenges, ensuring sustainable development in partner countries. Triangular cooperation is seen as a means by which developing countries can voluntarily assist each other in undertaking their climate change actions, in the context of the implementation of the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The Paris Agreement marked a turning point in international co-operation on climate change, as it breaks up the dichotomy of Annex I and Annex II countries of the Kyoto Protocol. Because of the advantages of fully mobilizing multiple resources, strong complementary effects of developed countries and emerging countries, and flexibility, Triangular co-operation can contribute to achieving ‘green’ objectives (e.g., on climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, biodiversity, desertification, and local environmental issues) in innovative, flexible and cost-effective ways within and across regions – and thus could help accelerate implementation of Paris Agreement.
This event will unpack triangular cooperation in the context of climate change and food systems transformation and how impact can be achieved. The event will bring together experts and leaders as they explore, debate, and highlight the importance of capacity building for countries to take effective climate-smart action. The event will highlight opportunities through the deployment of triangular cooperation among different green communities. Case studies will also be presented on the potential of green triangular cooperation, and dedicated pilots and scale-up of successful initiatives for accelerating climate-smart innovative interventions.
Organizer
International Agri-Food Network
The International Agri-Food Network (IAFN) is a coalition of small, medium and large-scale business enterprises involved in agriculture, food security and nutrition. The membership includes farmers, input providers, cooperatives, processors, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), food companies, and more.
Contact Robynne Anderson robynne@emergingag.com
Biographies
Mr. Ross Hampton, Chief Executive Officer, Australian Forest Products Association, Chair, FAO Advisory Committee on Sustainable Forest-based Industries
Ross Hampton has been CEO of the single national body representing forest industries in Australia for the last decade. This body is called AFPA and it covers owners and managers of natural forests and planted forests, timber processors and the pulp, paper and bioproducts sectors.
Under Ross Hampton, AFPA has had two very strong areas of focus for many years.
The first has been to bring to the fore in Australia recognition of the sector’s positive contribution to climate mitigation. The second of his passions has been creating synergies and connections with agriculture and developing new models to produce a win for farmers and a win for forestry.
As Chair of the FAO Advisory Committee on Sustainable Forest-based Industries (ACSFI), Ross Hampton has been able to give these two areas of focus a global dimension.
ACSFI was established in 1960 as one of the half dozen statutory bodies to advise the FAO Director General. ACSFI is the only statutory body composed of private sector nominees. The job of ACSFI is to provide a conduit between FAO and the private sector. As Chair, Ross Hampton harnesses the thoughts and counsel of private sector leaders from across the globe.
Ross Hampton has a Master’s Degree in Public Policy (specializing in Environment Policy) from the Australian National University and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD).
Dr. Leonardus Vergütz is a professor and soil scientist currently developing the Chair in Soil Science at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University – UM6P.
He is an agronomist with MSc and DSc in Soil Science and Plant Nutrition and has great experience with the highly weathered and acidic soils commonly found in the tropics. Before arriving in Morocco, he was a professor for 7 years at Universidade Federal de Viçosa – Brazil. He has more than 50 peer reviewed publications and is interested in understanding the mechanisms controlling the fate and behavior of elements in the soil-plant-human continuum aiming to build more sustainable and productive agricultural systems. He was part of the advisory group commissioned by the European Commission that wrote the policy paper that should guide the R&I cooperation between Africa and Europe for the Green Transition in Africa. This paper was released earlier this year during the AU-EU Summit and brings soil security to the core of the Green Transition in Africa.
Jay Waldvogel, Senior Vice President, Global Development, Dairy Farmers of America
Jay has more than 30 years of experience in the global dairy industry with leading dairy companies Campina in Europe and Fonterra Co-operative Group in New Zealand. He has held senior positions in finance, operations, marketing, strategy, mergers and acquisitions, sales and general management. Jay currently serves on a number of industry leadership groups and company boards.
Dr. Ahmed Nasr-Allah, Country Director, WorldFish Egypt
Ahmed the Country Director of WorldFish, Egypt since September 2020. He has a long experience as a scientist in the sustainable aquaculture department in WorldFish since 2013. His main specialization area is production system and value chain development. Ahmed has a long field and research experience in Aquaculture since 1988. During which he managed several bilateral projects in Egypt and several African countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Ahmed is coordinating an important capacity building program at the Fish for Africa Innovation Hub, Abbassa, Egypt in cooperation with USSEC/SEC. He is a member of several national and regional committees. He is a Principle Research in the Central Laboratory for Aquaculture Research (CLAR) and seconded to WorldFish. He holds a M.Sc. in Aquaculture Management and Planning (University of Hull, UK) and a Ph.D. in Aquaculture (Suez Canal University). Ahmed publications record exceeds 50 articles (per reviewed papers, conference paper, technical report and book chapter). His research interest areas are fish farming systems, water use efficiency in aquaculture and value chain analyses of aquaculture and fisheries sector.
Robynne Anderson, Secretary General, Private Sector Mechanism
Robynne Anderson is an authority on global agricultural and food policies. Her engagement reaches throughout the value chain, providing support on strategy and management to a broad range of clients ranging from scientists to governments, farmers to food processors. Robynne has engaged in processes at the UN General Assembly, Rio+20, the UN Committee on World Food Security, the UN negotiations on the Sustainable Development Goals. She broke new ground in bringing new issues to prominence in the international policy fora, such as the role of women in farming, Voluntary Guidelines on Land Tenure, the importance of post-harvest losses and food waste in food security. Robynne represents accredited organizations at the United Nations, bringing the voice of agriculture in multi-governmental processes. Her company serves as the Secretariat of the International Agri-Food Network (IAFN), she founded the Farming First coalition in 2007, and has coordinated the Farmers Major Group, and the Global Business Alliance 4 the Environment (GBA4E). She led the two-year long negotiations for obtaining the declaration by the UN General Assembly of the International Year of Pulses and then coordinates the activities for the year on behalf of the Global Pulse Confederation reaching 1 billion people on social media. Robynne is the youngest person inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame and is one of just 8 women in the Hall. She also received the 2018 Demeter Award for Woman in Agriculture. Prior to founding Emerging ag, Robynne established Issues Ink, an agricultural publishing company specializing in 12 magazines and electronic titles on Canadian and American agriculture. She started her career in Canadian politics as legislative assistant to the then Deputy Prime Minister of Canada. In addition to her role at Emerging ag, Robynne is part of a family farm in Manitoba, Canada. She is also the founder and current chairman of the Manyinga school project, a non-profit organization that supports orphans to learn agricultural skills through schools.