It is easy to be cynical about the outcome of the 1996 World Food Summit (WFS). Will history judge it to have been yet another failure in the many attempts to achieve world food security over the past half century? An Overseas Development Institute Briefing Paper reviews the Summit and considers what it achieved - and failed to achieve - in terms of hard outcomes. This retrospective examination provides an opportunity to reflect on the usefulness of international conferences in general as focal points for addressing issues of global significance.

The 1996 WFS was important in confirming a near-consensus on the main features of the global problem of food insecurity as it now exists. It recognised the unacceptable dimensions of problems of hunger and malnutrition. These problems were seen as primarily associated with poverty, intensified by (and interacting with) conflict and other sources of political instability. Food security was recognised as not just a technical matter of assuring food supplies, but the simultaneous achievement of food availability, stability of supply, and access for all. The 'Plan of Action' set out by the Summit's Member States identifies seven areas of official commitment considered vital to promoting food security, viz:

• ensuring and enabling a supportive political, social and economic environment
• activating policies that curb poverty and inequality and improve physical and economic access to food for all
• pursuing participatory and sustainable food production and rural development policies and practices in all areas, regardless of productive potential
• ensuring trade policies are consistent with fostering food security for all
• preventing and forestalling natural and man-made disasters and meeting transitory and emergency food requirements
• allocating public and private investments to upgrade human resources, sustainable agricultural systems and rural development in high and low potential areas alike
• implementing, monitoring and following up the Plan of Action.

This Plan of Action makes many references to actors or institutions in civil society as keys to implementing and monitoring the plan. In affirmation of this role, the NGO (non-governmental organisation) Forum at the Summit set out its own alternative model for achieving food security, based on decentralisation and a break-up of the present concentration of wealth and power. In contrast to the governments' emphasis on trade related aspects of food security, the NGOs placed the right to food at the centre of their agenda. Their collective statement Profit for the Few or Food for All highlighted six key policy areas:

• Strengthening the capacity of family farmers and local and regional food systems.
• Reversing the concentration of wealth and power.
• Modifying farming systems in line with agro-ecological principles.
• Recognising that primary responsibility for ensuring food security lies with national and local governments
• Strengthening capacity and enhancing accountability of national and local governments accordingly.
• Bolstering and deepening the participation of people's organisations and NGOs in action at all levels.
• Guaranteeing in international law the basic human right to food.

The near consensus reached on the nature of the food security problem is the most obvious success of the 1996 summit. Its failure to address inter-agency differences is however, a major setback in the drive to reach agreement across the UN on development policy. While some would argue that the Summit is a costly process with relatively limited outcomes, the Briefing Paper hints that in a global economy where policy agendas are defined by international media events, the issues of hunger and food security would be forgotten if they were not aired in such a highly publicised forum.

Source(s):
Global hunger and food security after the world food summit, ODI Briefing Paper, 1997 (1) Full document.

Funded by: Overseas Development Institute (ODI), UK

id21 Research Highlight: 1998-May-01

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