Features

Hunger is rising, due to factors including conflict, climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, which is putting a strain on food systems that are already failing in many countries. In today’s LIVE blog, marking World Food Day, we will look at some of the many issues and possible solutions.

Highlights

•    UN chief video message

•    What is sustainable agriculture?

•    Food and the COVID-19 pandemic

•    The business of food

•    UN commits to transforming food systems

The need for the World Food Programme, the recipient of the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize, to exist is starker than ever. From conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to flooding in South Sudan, and the civil war in Yemen, man-made and natural disasters are leaving tens of millions of people unsure if they will have enough food for themselves and their families to survive on.

Luis Jose Faife, a UN refugee agency (UNHCR) worker from Mozambique, survived the devastation of Cyclones Idai and Kenneth, which killed more than 600 people in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe, and displaced some 2.2. million people, in March 2019. Now COVID-19 is posing a new challenge to humanitarian workers, and the people they help.

Here's our special LIVE coverage of the UN Summit on Biodiversity, where activists and senior UN officials are calling for urgent action on biodiversity, to help ensure sustainable development for all.



 

75 years on from the founding of the UN, young people are being enlisted to share their visions of a better planet, and help decide the next chapter of the Organization. 

The 75th UN General Assembly (UNGA) session, begins on 15 September and this year, due to the ongoing global pandemic, it will be unlike any other in the organization’s three quarters of a century of existence. 

Agnes Kalibata, the former Rwandan Minister for Agriculture, has been tasked with leading the first-ever UN Food Systems Summit. In an interview with UN News, she outlined her vision for a transformed international system that is more resilient, fairer, and less harmful to the planet.

A Brazilian filmmaker is hoping that the uncertainty brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic will generate more empathy and solidarity towards others, including refugees, an optimistic position also held by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in the South American country.

With the latest UN climate report containing worrying evidence that climate change is having a major effect on all aspects of the environment, how can teachers help children and adults to sort through the growing mass of information, avoid being overwhelmed, and come to an understanding of the challenges, and potential solutions, to what the UN Secretary-General has called “an existential crisis”?

In cities and communities across the world, citizens of all ages and backgrounds are getting the chance to literally play an important role in redesigning their public spaces, thanks to an innovative collaboration between the UN, and the company behind the popular computer game Minecraft.