Food Systems Transformation through Dialogues

By David Nabarro, Strategic Director, 4SD Foundation

The Nutrition Dialogues enable people at risk of hunger and malnutrition to share experiences and explore actions which they believe will have the greatest impact. The proposed method for Nutrition Dialogues builds on 4SD’s experience of using facilitated, multistakeholder dialogues to address complex and contested issues, enabling people with diverse perspectives to align for impactful action.  The method is designed to encourage stakeholder alignment despite the complexity and variability of nutrition challenges in our world.

The background is that in 2018, five partners invited 4SD to curate Food Systems Dialogues. They were designed for diverse stakeholders to explore priorities for the future of food systems despite their different interests and perspectives.

The dialogue method was adopted by Dr Agnes Kalibata, the UN’s Special Envoy for the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit, as part of the preparatory process.  Each national government was invited to nominate a National Convenor to organize inclusive multi-stakeholder Food Systems Dialogues. There were also opportunities for the independent organization of dialogues.  By the time of the Summit, 110 000 participants were involved in at least 1650 dialogue events.  National Convenors were nominated in over 140 countries.  120 strategic pathways for future national food systems had emerged.

On 22 October 2024 a Comment was published in the journal Nature Food titled Food Systems Transformation through Dialogues.  It is a three-page article authored by Agnes Kalibata and me. We reflect on the extraordinary degree of popular engagement in the Food Systems Summit through the use of dialogues.  We offer some lessons that could be applied in other large-scale dialogue-based processes. It is our hope that what is in the article will resonate with Convenors of Nutrition Dialogues as well as with organizers of other dialogue events around the world.

The Comment is available here

4SD Foundation is an Initiating Partner of the Nutrition Dialogues.