117. The Seeds Are Sown for a Food Revolution with Agnes Kalibata
Outrage + Optimism: The Climate Podcast
Persephonica
4.7 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 24 September 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
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Summary
Following the success of UN Food Systems Summit, or as it’s also known- “The People’s Summit” we get a chance to speak to the driving force behind it, UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Food Systems Summit, Agnes Kalibata.
Formerly Rwanda’s Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI) from 2008 to 2014, she drove programs that moved her country to food security helping to lift more than a million Rwandans out of poverty.
Now as Special Envoy, her efforts toward progress of the delivery of the SDGs, and to prioritise Food Systems in the global conversation around climate change are coming to a 2 year culmination. Besides this summit being the first time the UN has called a summit dedicated to food systems, it is engaging more than 100,000 people from 147 countries through 900 independent multi-stakeholder dialogues on food system transformation. UN Summits are often mostly prepared statements by member states. This move to put people and dialogue at the center was a radical return to destroying our siloed thinking when it comes to global issues.
The Food Revolution begins with a Thought Revolution, and people are at the heart of systemic change.
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Thank you to our guests this week:
Dr Agnes Kalibata
UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy | 2021 Food Systems Summit
UN Food Systems Summit 2021
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, everyone. It's Tom here. So last week, we brought you a new kind of episode from |
| 0:06.0 | Outration Optimism. It was called Setting the Table for a Food Revolution, in which we |
| 0:10.5 | dug into all of the issues behind the food supply chain, the impacts that it's creating |
| 0:15.8 | and the opportunities for transformation. And we timed that event to come out just a |
| 0:20.5 | few days ago, because we wanted it to align with the UN Food Systems Summit. This is the |
| 0:26.3 | first event of its kind. It was taking place this week during the UN General Assembly, where |
| 0:31.6 | governments and all kinds of other stakeholders, including civil society and business, were |
| 0:36.4 | coming together to try to find solutions to these systemic issues around the food supply |
| 0:41.9 | chain and how we can make it more sustainable. So in that episode, we pointed out that the |
| 0:47.4 | person right at the heart of this was called Dr Agnes Calabata, the UN Secretary-General's |
| 0:53.7 | Special Envoy to the 2021 Food System Summit. And what we did was we gave you that episode |
| 1:00.5 | and then we waited until the food system summit was over and then we talked to Agnes Calabata. |
| 1:07.0 | We talked to her today just a few hours ago and actually it's slightly incorrect to say |
| 1:11.3 | it was over. It's still going on. She still has a few more hours to go. And she is the |
| 1:15.1 | most remarkable either. She's done an incredible job to bring this very complicated issue right |
| 1:20.7 | to the top table in the UN. As I said, she's the Special Envoy for the Food System Summit. |
| 1:26.3 | But previously, she was Rwanda's Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources from 28 |
| 1:31.9 | to 2014, where she drove all kinds of programs that moved her country to food security and |
| 1:37.5 | helped lift more than a million Rwandans out of poverty. She has really done this. She's |
| 1:42.5 | really understood what is necessary to address the issue of hunger, to face the issue of climate |
| 1:47.9 | change and bring the two together for the prosperity of people and for the betterment |
| 1:52.3 | of nature. I found this conversation to be incredible. She's such a remarkable person. You |
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