Hello. Good afternoon. We still have people coming in, which is wonderful, but I would like to start sharp with this wonderful event. So to all those of you who are already with us, welcome. Welcome to this first of a series of dialogues with the Portuguese presidency of the Council of the European Union, co-organized with a foul liaison office in Brussels. I should say that as a member of the European Parliament and member of the European Parliamentary Alliance against hunger and malnutrition, I am very, very happy to moderate this event. Together with our distinguished speakers and panelists, we will discuss today in this afternoon, the importance of inclusive territorial approaches to promote sustainable food systems and healthy diets. As mentioned, this dialogue is aligned with the Food Systems Summit that the Secretary General Antonio Guterres will convene this year as a United Nations initiative to maximize the co-benefits of a food systems approach across the entire 2030 agenda. Portugal and the entire European Union are fully committed to this agenda. FAU facilitates this dialogue as part of its lead role in this pathway for a global transformation. Before getting into our speakers, allow me to share some housekeeping rules. I think you can all see in the screen. First of all, I'm very happy to let you know that we're having one-way interpretation from English into Portuguese. So please tune in to your preferred language at the bottom of your screen, okay? I also would like to say that this event is being recorded and the recording will be available on the FAU Brussels web page, sorry, which will be included in the follow-up of this event. We encourage you to share your thoughts with us and to interact with each other. Just make sure that you are in the right setting when you're commenting as indicated by FAU colleagues in the chat box, okay? So also, I think you would like to know that when tweeting about this event, don't forget to use the hashtag food systems and U2021PT, okay? Right, so opening our event today, we have our dear friend, Rodrigo de la Puerta, Director of the FAU Liaison Office in Brussels for welcoming remarks. And then I'll go to Mr. Bruno Dimash, Deputy Director General for Planning, Policies and General Administration from the Portuguese Ministry of Agriculture. And for the concluding remarks, I'll be wrapping up the event. So I will now pass the floor to Rodrigo de la Puerta, Director of the FAU Liaison Office in Brussels for his welcoming remarks to everybody. Rodrigo, go ahead. Dear Isabel, thank you very much, good afternoon. Thank you very much for your patience in moderating our today's event. Dear friends, I thank you very much for the presence of all of you in this event. And especially, apart from the presence of the Portuguese, the organization of an event on such an important and current topic. With the voice of the organization, I will now go to the English. Dear friends, two of the major challenges of our times are malnutrition in all its forms and the degradation of the environment and natural resources. Both are happening at an accelerated pace and both are totally interconnected. The state of food security and nutrition in the World Report, what we call SOFI 2020, shows that almost 700 million people went hungry in 2019. Up by 10 million from 2018 and nearly 60 million in five years. COVID-19 is just making things worse. As progress is in fighting hunger stalls, COVID-19 is intensifying the vulnerabilities of global food systems and the stood as all those activities affecting the production, the distribution and the consumption of food. While it is too soon to assess the full impact of lockdown measures in various countries, the SOFI reports estimate that up to 132 more million people may have gone hungry in 2020 due to the economic recession triggered by COVID-19. Poor quality diets are a major contributing factor to the rising prevalence of malnutrition in all its forms, from under nourishment to obesity. And the affordability of food is also an issue due to the cost of food or also to the inadequate income. The result is horrible, more than three billion people do not have access to enough healthy or nutritious food. As I just mentioned, the way we produce food is taking a toll on our natural resources. For example, food production accounts for the use of 48% and 70% of land and freshwater resources respectively at the global level. There is no time to waste in transforming our food systems to protect our planet while improving our lives. Topics such as food, security and nutrition, poverty, biodiversity laws, greenhouse gas emissions will be high on the 2021 international agenda, particularly as Isabel was mentioning at the UN Food Systems Summit to be convened by UN Secretary General Antonio Buterres in September. As noted by the UN Secretary General, it is unacceptable that hunger is increasing at a time when the world is wasting more than one billion tons of food every year. It is time to change the way we produce and consume food, including producing greenhouse gas emissions. FAO's Director General Chidong Yu also points out that the exponential growth of obesity and overweight is having a broad impact on all regions of the world across gender, economic and age categories. Food systems transformation involve key issues such as one, the strengthening of family farming which accounts for 80% of all food produced globally. Two, fighting the consumption of unhealthy foods. And three, the enhancement of territorial agriculture food systems, the theme being discussed today with reinforcement of food resilience and local development. In these three areas, Portugal, particularly now at the helm of the EU Council, has proven to be an active player to promote sustainable and territorial food systems for healthier diets. On family farming, Portugal has been a leading voice on the global stage since international year of family farming in 2014. During the UN Decade for Family Farming 2019, the year 2028, the country plays an active role in the group of friends, a selected group of nations that drives the family farming agenda and international level. Since then, Portugal has pushed for the negotiations of the Lisbon Charter for strengthening of family farming, a commitment from Portuguese speaking countries, the CPLP. Concerning the fighting obesity, the combination of unhealthy diets and the increase in sedentary lifestyle has inspired a public health campaign against childhood obesity in Portugal. With relation to the enhancement of territorial and sustainable food systems, Portugal is also supporting through its Ministry of Agriculture the development of local food policies and respective governance structures in several municipalities in the country. Before passing the floor to the speakers, I would like to commend the European Union for its efforts towards the promotion of territorial sustainable food systems for healthy diets in its member states and beyond. The Farm to Fork Strategy launched last year, as all of you know, as part of the European Green Deal, sets the stage for a comprehensive policy architecture designed to change the current global food systems paradigm. The Farm to Fork also emphasizes the role of farmers in tackling the challenges of the transition towards more sustainable agriculture. The Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, is proud to team up with the EU, with Portugal, to put forward the Farm to Fork as the UN Food Systems Summit is expected to pave the way for food systems and formation globally. Thanks again so much for being here today. I would like to thank you for your words. Thank you very much, Rodrigo. Thank you very much for your opening notes. Now we have the welcoming remarks from Bruno Dimas. So Bruno Dimas, the floor is now yours. Thank you. Yeah, good afternoon, everybody. We live in a world full of needs, inequalities and contradictions that need to have a solution. As Mr. Huerta has made mentioned to some figures, but it's not waste of time to underline that the world produces enough food to feed its entire population. But about 690 million people suffer food insecurity. 800 million live in extreme poverty and more than 1.5 billion people cannot afford a diet that meets the required levels of essential nutrients. At the same time, our food systems are often related to biodiversity laws over whose natural reserves and GHA emissions. Moreover, off of the adult population are now overweight, contributing to a high prevalence of non-communicable disease and related health care costs. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated more nutrition and poverty, especially among the most vulnerable people. The urgency for action led the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Huerta to launch the United Nations summit on food systems to be held in September 2021 to give a boost to the realization of the 2002-2030 agenda and the achievement of its 17 sustainable development goals. The Portuguese presidency of the Council of the European Union cites the moment to join the global effort to the realization of the United Nations agenda 2030 and to contribute to a successful United Nations summit on food system joining FAU through the Liaison Office in Brussels to promote this videoconference on territorial food systems. I would therefore like to thank the director of the FAU office in Brussels, Rodrigo La Puerre, and all its team for organizing this webinar. I also want to thank Mr. Nizabel Carvalhais, member of the European Parliament, and Mr. Leonardo Mizzi from the European Commission. Mr. Benjamin Davis of FAU, Mrs. Simples Noel of African Union, and to Mr. Francesco Rampa, a special advisor for the Italian G20 presidency, who agreed to participate and give their contribution to this conference. I'd also like to refer the important rule that CPLP, the community of Portuguese-speaking countries, has played in the search for solutions to eradicate anger in its nine countries, covering a total population of about 290 million zeneritans. Indeed, the CPLP launched its Food and Nutrition Security Strategy, a major instrument for coordinate action to combat food insecurity in CPLP. Through that strategy, the CPLP constitute the Food and Nutritional Security Council and paved the way for the constitution of nine national councils, instruments of fundamental importance for coordinating multi-sectorial action in which civil society, the private sector, and the academia have an important rule. Also, family farming plays a major role in CPLP AB culture. The community developed the voluntary guidelines on family farming approved in 2017, and Lisbon Charter on family farming signed in 2018 by CPLP agave culture ministers about the commitment to apply the guidelines in all member states, which is an important milestone in the fight against anger in the Portuguese-speaking country. A video produced by the executive secretary of CPLP presenting the work developed within the scope of the CPLP Food and Nutrition Security Strategy will be presented during this session. I am grateful to CPLP and Tweets Cooperation Director, Manuel Lopão, for sharing that video for this seminar.  Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Bruno Dimas. Now, we will move on our panel by setting the scene with two very special panelists. There you have. Yeah, now you can see. We'll have Leonhard Misi, who is the head of unit for Sustainable Agri-Food Systems and Fisheries in the new EU Commission Directorate General for International Partnerships, DG Intpa, and FAUS Director of the Inclusive Rural Transformation and Gender Equity Division, Benjamin Davies. Following their interventions, Dr. Simplis Nuala, African Union Commission's head of division for Agriculture and Food Security, will also join the debate. And his intervention will be followed by Francesco Rampa, senior expert for Sustainable Development and Food Systems for the Italian G20 presidency and member of Sustainable Food Systems Program of the European Center for Development Policy Management. Okay, so let's turn now to Leonhard. Okay, Leonhard, we know that the EU Farm to Fork Strategy is at the very heart of the European Green Deal and has the primary objective of accelerating the EU's transition to a more sustainable food system. But this goal, this objective is also present in the EU's partnerships all over the world, including the cooperation with African, Caribbean, and Pacific States. So could you please help us to learn more on this EU commitment to support a global level at the global level, sorry, the transition to more sustainable, to green and just food systems and how it will contribute to the UN Food Systems Summit process and its goals. Go ahead. Thank you. Thank you a lot, Isabel, and thank you to Rodrigo. And thank you to the Portuguese presidency. I think coming from a very tough year of COVID and we're still experiencing COVID and we will continue experiencing in the months ahead even with the rollout of the vaccine, I think it's a wake up call to put agri-food systems also at the core of the international agenda because we often forget that agri-food systems following or after health and vaccines is probably the most complex and affected sector in the whole economy. You mentioned a lot the UN Food Systems Summit. There is also a big event coming up in Tokyo which is the nutrition for growth which focuses on nutrition. And Isabel and Rodrigo and the Portuguese presidency, we as European Union, EU 27, with the institutions, we need to show leadership in the run up to the UN Food Systems Summit so that we are transformational. Isabel mentioned the farm to fork. We have the EU Green Deal, but we also need to make this more granular, more practical in terms of what we want to achieve. You all know that we come out from a multi-financial framework 2014-2020. So this ends the cycle of programming and in December, the European Parliament, the Council agreed on the new indigenous instrument which is the instrument 2021-2027. And we are at the core these very days and the coming weeks to start outlining the national, multi-country and global public goods which will shape and which will basically be the ammunition of the farm to fork and the EU Green Deal for the next programming period. And I'll give you a bit of ideas, nothing is yet agreed, but I'll give you a bit of pists, a bit of past ways where we can contribute together with the EU member states because as Bruno mentioned, we are already this week going to have a first round of discussions on the Council conclusions on the UN Food Systems Summit. And we want Council conclusions which are robust and ambitious. Sometimes Council conclusions are pretty general. We want these to be very ambitious, a call for action which will also show the way of how the European Union wants to come up with concrete solutions. And this is linked also to the topic of territorial food systems and linking to the action tracks because the UN Food Systems have action tracks. We start with nutrition. Action track one, nutrition. We have a big portfolio which culminated already in 2019 with commitments of around 3.5 billion. And the other commitment is the commitment to reduce stunting by 7 million. Now we also know that COVID will increase the number of wasted kids, will increase the number of stunted kids. Hence the need to continue building up also linked to the commitments of this new commission to focus more and more on human development. Because evidently COVID also has created and will create more shocks on gender, on youth, on the possibilities of youth to engage but also on healthy nutritious diets. So the need for a more holistic approach, for example, between rural areas, secondary cities, urban centers becomes very crucial. You can't have supply chains and we experienced this in the first wave.  You can't have robust food systems if you don't have good supply networks. Even if you speak about short supply circuits, these need to be integrated with good connectivity, with good rural infrastructure, with supply chains which have also cold supply chains, storage and reduction of basic food waste and losses. So this is going to be key in terms of the transformation agenda. A clear call that Europe and its member states will continue also to commit on nutrition. This will be one of the big challenges once the financing is wrapped up in terms of national, multi-country and global programming that we will continue hopefully with the political decisions taken at the highest level by commissioners to actually signal a commitment towards nutrition and agri-food system. Secondly, the question of inclusiveness. A territorial approach needs also to be an inclusive approach. Inclusive because COVID has also exposed the imbalances across the value chain. What we are trying to do, for example, we had already this morning, the continuation of our discussions on cocoa. We're speaking here about two countries, but it can be replicated not only to cocoa, eventually to other agri-food products, is what we are trying to construct around deforestation. So this would be baseline analysis to also stop halt deforestation. As you know, the environment will come up with legislative proposal later on this year on deforestation free value chains, linked also to the concept of living incomes, living wages, but also to the work that DigiJust is going to do. And this is also a big flagship for this year that FAO and Diablo will continue working this on child labor. So a labor, a human rights approach, tackling child labor, especially in cocoa value chains and evidently a rebalancing of the cocoa value chain for farmers' income using as a baseline the living income differential that the two countries of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana are doing. So this is what we are trying to construct under a concrete value chain and evidently big challenges under other value chains which needs to be thought of if we get the cocoa value chain correct. Now evidently any cocoa value chain or any agriculture value chain needs to accompany by private financing. No territorial approach or no diverse diet can be done just by grants or budget support on its own. It has to be accompanied also by private sector investment. And this is also a call for financial institutions because the experience that we had until now is rather timid. Financial institutions, including European financial institutions, I'm speaking about development finance here are still somewhat risk averse to invest in agricultural value chains. They are risk averse because it's too risky, too complicated to invest to the benefit of small farm holders because the transaction costs are high. The benefits of investing in fragmented agri-value chains are too complicated, the risk element is high. So what we are trying to do with the FAO Investment Center, with EFAD, we also unveiled a fund which is the Horuma fund with Acid in Spain but also our own portfolio of the Agri-Fi with the EDFIs is to look at smaller ticket sizes. Ticket sizes which are in the 20,000, 50,000, 100,000 range so that we can risk and de-risk small farm holders supporting also farmers organizations because without strong farmers organizations, without strong cooperative movements, that value addition, that added value and that return on investment will not happen and financial institutions will not necessarily de-risk. So a territorial food systems approach which puts at the core also a new way of de-risking agriculture but evidently financial institutions need to do much more than they have done to date. And last but not least, they need to continue coordinating more on food crisis hotspots. This is being done with FAO, with WFP, with other partners including USAID on a national multi-country global approach to food crisis hotspots coordination via the global report on food crisis. Food crisis hotspots risk increasing. We look around from the MNs to the South Sudan to the Somalias, desert locusts, pests and diseases and evidently the challenges around pandemics and evidently a need to refocus on one health where at the core of all this research innovation needs to be more and more prioritized. Once again, territorial approaches require a strong embedding of research innovation and the digital transformation agenda. So Isabel, this is a bit the pathway that we want to enter evidently with a stronger focus on modalities around acrocology, scaling up our projects like what we are doing under the Zira on the water, land, energy nexus and putting at the core the values that the EU Green Deal has already outlined. So a plea to the Portuguese presidency, a plea also inter-institutionally between us, the parliament and the other institutions to also construe dialogues. I would welcome any dialogue that Portugal wants to host. We are in contact with a number of member states but we are also thinking of railing behind the services but also approaching the European Parliament so that hopefully we can organize a Brussels based dialogue which will also link to the national dialogues that our member states will start rolling out from February-March until the pre-summit in June. Over to you. Thank you, thank you very much, Leonard, for your insights and for sharing with us the used vision in this regard. Let me now turn to Benjamin Davis. FAU is one of the leading UN agencies regarding food systems transformation. Now Benjamin, inclusivity becomes fundamental for the summit's goals, not only to ensure access to safe and nutritious food for all but also to advance equitable livelihoods just to mention two of the five action tracks of the summit. Why a territorial approach is important in this regard? Great, thank you, thank you Isabel. And I also want to thank first the FAU liaison office in Brussels as well as the Portuguese presidency for organizing this important event and who are inviting me. As a priority to answering that question, I'd like to second perhaps what Leonard was emphasized in his short presentation around the importance of concrete solutions, the importance of focusing on livelihoods and human development in a transformational agenda. Now, I think a lot of the food system transformation discussion, a lot of the big narrative has been around the importance of healthy diets, of a transformation which is environmentally sustainable addressing climate change, et cetera, but the concept of inclusivity is central. It's fundamental and it's fundamental because food system transformation has enormous economic and social implications around in back of the invoked calculations that we've made around 4.5 billion people depend on food systems at least in part for their livelihoods. And this is family farmers, small-scale producers, workers, migrants, business owners, et cetera, all along the value chain from the farm to the consumer. And over a billion people live in moderate and extreme poverty in rural areas, again, most involved in the food system. Prior to COVID-19 and of course, the numbers have increased dramatically as we know with COVID-19. Now, food security is also worsened dramatically. Inequality is also significantly worsened. The numbers from Latin America, for example, are stratospheric in terms of the increases in income inequality from the economic recessions caused by COVID, which compounds inequality and access to services, to health services and to formal employment. And so COVID-19 is really unmasked and inequality that was always there but we can't really hide anymore. This is very important long-term consequences. For example, in terms of increases in child labor, as Leonard referred to, as well as a lower development trajectory going into the future unless we take direct action. And all of this is very important just to the success of the very concept of food system transformation because on the one hand, we need to think about the incomes that are necessary in order to access these healthy diets and the livelihoods that can drive and be supported by the sustainable development of agriculture and rural areas. And there isn't, there's nothing inherently inclusive about food system transformation or the economic transformation, whether it's agricultural, rural or structural that drives it. In fact, it tends to be exclusive and inequality producing. And so to make it inclusive requires political will, legal and institutional reforms that strengthen transparency and accountability, empower local communities, especially in those vulnerable groups, including women, youth and indigenous peoples, again, as Leonard was mentioning, producer organizations, so they can participate in the policy and the planning processes. Second, a successful food system transformation relies on the economic decisions of hundreds of millions of economic agents, many of whom are poor and vulnerable, marginalized. And so we need to understand the barriers and the constraints that they face, the structural challenges in terms of access to education, technical skills, land, water, et cetera, missing markets and market failure, et cetera, in order to make the process of food system transformation successful. Now the food system summit action track four on advancing equitable livelihoods, to me, it's on track, right? It's recognizing the central role of building agency of these different groups. Again, that I've mentioned, but also including seasonal laborers, disabled, et cetera, that are most limited by current food system practices, changing power relations within food systems and transforming structures that perpetuate this exclusion. But I think we need to make sure that that discussion is also infused within the other action tracks of the food system summit and the process as a whole. Now, the choices on how we promote and govern food system transformation are very important in terms of promoting these issues around agency power relations and structural issues. And it's important that this approach needs to be people-centered to ensure the agency of the poor and the vulnerable needs to be multi-stakeholder to address the power inequities in place-based to take into account the heterogeneity of socioeconomic and environmental conditions and situations. And to leverage actions, again, as Leonard mentioned, along the rural urban continuum and cross-sector, right? So it's quite a complex process, but these are all the characteristics which the territorial approaches to development take into account and which gets us to the importance of what we're discussing today. It's that way of bringing everything together in an approach that's place-based and spatially-based, which is important. And it's key to making sure that food systems transformation will advance equitable livelihoods. So territorial approaches, they tend to important, they shouldn't stress the importance of negotiation, consensus-building and conflict resolution, and by doing so, they can influence inclusive decision-making in power local populations through formal and informal organizations and networks. Now, for many years, we've been working on territorial development approaches in different contexts, but really now it seems as though the time has come for territorial development. The UN decade on family farming promotes a territorial approach, bringing in family farmers as key agents of territorial development. Within FAO in Latin America, we started the Siente Retorios Initiative, which is a strategy which helps to focus on the most lagging and vulnerable rural territories in the region and do territorial plans to tackle the specific causes of poverty and inequality in the poorest territories in the region. We've also been working over the past few years to bring together landscape management and territorial development approaches. And so these two have different entry points, but they're both place-based and they have strong emphasis on the multi-stakeholder governance, cross-sectoral coordination, and multi-level actions. They're very complementary and cross-disciplinary. And we've taken undertaking case studies to better understand how these are implemented in practice, in country level, and how they can be brought together. And we're working to develop guidelines as to how to further integrate these approaches across different dimensions. We're also working closely with partners, including the European Commission, SIDAD, GIZ, BMZ, and NAPOD, and others around the territorial perspectives for development, the TP4D Alliance in 2018. And so this initiative is aimed at developing a common understanding of territorial approaches and a wider alliance between practitioners, researchers, international organizations, governments, in terms of bringing in territorial perspectives and how it's done in terms of policy, program, design, and implementation. This past year with GIZ and BMZ, we've reconvened this initiative to learn from these experiences, reflect on an exercise that GIZ has led on behalf of TP4D to reflect on this integration of territorial and landscaping approaches. We're also working on finalizing a methodology to focusing on bottom-up territorial diagnosis of food systems and participatory development of different territorial development plans, again, focusing on the empowerment of the most vulnerable so they have a stronger role in food systems transformation. FAO's hand-in-hand also has a territorial perspective, but an interesting part of this initiative is the creation of this geospatial platform, which has a large and rich set of spatially desegregated data on food and agriculture, agro-climatic conditions and natural resources, which can help strengthen evidence-based decision-making in the food and agricultural sectors and the food system transformation. And it's a public good, which will allow us to help give an evidence base to these territorial approaches. Now, the weakest part of this platform, and really more generally in terms of the availability of spatially desegregated data, as well as I think within the food system transformation narrative in general, is really around the socioeconomic characteristics, the welfare, poverty, food security and livelihoods. And so we're working hard to try to bring in spatially desegregated welfare data to combine with the vast data that the platform already has around agro-climatic and environmental dimensions. And so we're working with groups who are looking at socioeconomic data in alternative ways using machine learning, satellite imagery, et cetera. And so I think that the common understanding of the importance of adopting territorial approaches in terms of the context of the food system summit and the implementation of the EU's food to fork strategies is fundamental. And so first, because far from reducing the approach to the local level, it allows the food systems to be brought into the multiple levels of spatial organization connecting the local, the region on the national scales. And secondly, just because the heterogeneity that defines food systems in all these different contexts. And in our mind, they're the most viable option to address the integrated nature of most SDGs related with food systems since they can bring in all these different elements. We've been working closely with the TP4D partners, including the commission as well as GIZ, other bilateral multilateral partners, including Portugal and the community of Portuguese speaking countries to pilot these territorial approaches in the context of the 2030 agenda. And so we feel that Portugal and the African member countries of the CPLP can play a very important role in terms of scaling up this approach and taking into consideration this partnership. And so we'd be very happy to continue to support the EU and the other interested member countries in being involved in this process. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Benjamin. This gave us really, really a good overview of the sustained importance of living no one behind. I remind you at this stage that once again, this event is being recorded and recording will be sent to you via email in the follow-up of this event. In the meantime, do use the question and answers box you see at the bottom of your screen to ask questions. Just make sure you indicate your name, your organization and for which panelists the question is, okay? Faw colleagues will also include these instructions in the chat box. So if you are attentive to that, you will see. Our expert panelists are very much looking forward to answer your questions. So go ahead, don't hesitate. Now, moving on, I would like to continue our discussion with Dr. Simplis Onoala. And sorry if I don't pronounce your name correctly, okay? Simplis assuring access to healthy diets for all in Africa constitutes, as we know, a major challenge. In this regard, decentralization and sustainable food systems become key pillars. The rural economy and agriculture department of the African Union provides an overall guidance in this regard. So Simplis, we are eager to hear your contribution. Go ahead. Thank you very much and thank you for inviting us to this very important discussion. Now, I will start by saying, despite the numerous initiatives, programs that have been implemented on the continent, either by the African Union, the regional economy communities, the national governments or the international communities, hunger is on the rise on the continent. In 2019, almost one fifth of the population on the continent suffered from malnutrition. And if you add another 400 million people suffering from moderate food insecurity, you see how the situation is. And COVID-19, and this has been said by Leonard, COVID-19 would push about 80 million more people on the continent to this goal. Now, the question is, how do the continent address the numerous challenges poses by food insecurity, food and nutrition insecurity in order to achieve the agenda 26 to three objective and sustainable goals objectives by 2030. We organized a meeting with our ministers in collaboration with AFU in July last year. And one strong message came out from the meeting. And the message was we need to accelerate the transformation of African agriphous system to be more resilient. And this should be done through the cadet, which is the continental agenda for agricultural transformation. Now, the question that I asked myself when I was requested to give a talk on decentralization, I was, what are these challenges that we need to address? If we really want to achieve the Cadet Malabo target by 2025. The first one is the challenge link to the process of the policy formulation and the strategy. Most often, these policies and strategies are agricultural focus policies or strategy. And by doing so, they are top-down approach. They are formulated at national level or continental level with little or no articulation of the regional specificities or the agro-ecological specificity of countries. Now, when we look at the various programs that are being implemented, we have noted that these programs lack a lot of coordination. And finally, if we want to transform agriculture, we need to address the issues related to access to input services and to infrastructure. I just picked these three that are surely linked to the issues of decentralization. I will not take you into the definition and the advantages that decentralization offers. But we know that the real advantage of having a decentralized system is to facilitate or to improve the quality of life or the livelihood at local level. But most often, I was quite impressed when I was asked to speak about this, is that when we speak decentralization, even within the African Union context, we don't link it directly to a cultural transformation or to food and nutrition security. We look at it more as a public democracy way of ruling countries without really looking at the impact that these can have on food and nutrition security. Whereas they are in very evidence that decentralization has a strong impact on food and nutrition security. I haven't said this, if you unpack decentralization into what I would call the three main aspects of decentralization, that is the physical decentralization, the administrative decentralization and the political decentralization. You will note that the first two, that is the fiscal decentralization, that is the ability to manage its resources and the administrative decentralization, that is the ability of taking decision of making policy choice have greater impact than the political decentralization, which is the ability of choosing their leaders. On the continent, the decentralization is still an unfinished business because most of the time, people view the decentralization as the ability for the local community to choose their leaders. This is done and where it is advanced, the local communities are given the opportunity to make the policy choice, but what is lacking is their location and the management of the resources. And for us, this is really where we should act and we should act fast as the continent. Unless we accelerate our decentralization processes, unless we allocate resources to the sub-national level, we may not achieve our goals of ending hunger by 2025. But also as the African Union, we are very keen on that decentralization is not only a national affair, it's also a continental, regional, why not a global affairs? And that is why we are working towards empowering member state to embark into the implementation of what is known as the principle of subsidiarity. I think we should, as global partners, we should, as national government, start looking at what is it that is well done at which level and let that level go in it. And this will certainly give more resources to the local communities. This will certainly give more chances for the local community to take control of their policy choice and certainly have more development. And finally, what we are advocating, and this is something that we have been discussing, which is at the heart of our partnership with the European Union in 2019, our minister met in Italy, our minister's in charge of agriculture, and endorsed a political declaration and action agenda. And this action agenda really looks at agricultural transformation to the length of the rural transformation, using the territorial approach. I think for us, this is something that we are pushing as a continent, we are pushing as a commission for all our member state to embark in this territorial approach for rural development as a way of achieving agenda 2063 goals of ending hunger by 2025. I thank you here, I think I will be ready to provide more clarification or more insight when it comes to the QA sessions. I thank you. Thank you, thank you so much, Mr. Noola, for your remarks, for your alerts and concerns. I would like now to turn to Francesco Rampa. Francesco, the scale of this challenge demands an overall involvement of governments, international organizations, academia, citizens. What about the G20? Its membership, as we know, accounts for 60% of the world's population and about 75% of international trade. Could you please describe to us how the Italian presidency will include food systems in the 2021's G20 agenda and how this year could be a year of opportunity for the EU Africa cooperation. Go ahead. Yes, thank you very much, Isabel, for introduction and thanks to FAO and the Portuguese EU presidency. In fact, as you said, I'll be wearing two hats. My European Center for Development Policy hat, but as we, PCDPM, I see the presidency as important that I start from your question on what are the plans by the Italians to address this very complicated agenda. And there I must stress a point that Leonor made on the importance of using COVID as an opportunity. The G20 presidency, unfortunately, like the Saudi presidency of the G20 must be framed in COVID response. And that, of course, as Leonor said, as a agriculture and food system at this core, not only as an emergency, as a threat, but I would say it's very important to use this momentum generated by an epidemic crisis. The fact that people and politicians are realizing the importance, rediscovering partly the importance of some basic values and try to focus the mind of people on the centrality of the food system. And the diets, as our meeting today say, to make sure that the life of people improve by also making sure that the life of the planet and the animals and plants that live there are connected. So in that sense, I am hoping that COVID naturally can be used also as an opportunity to raise awareness about these interconnections with food system at their center and the Italian presidency of the G20 has already announced that the One Health approach will be central, both as an emergency reaction and response, the G20 must help, especially low-income countries respond to the pandemic. There is a big, big dossier, of course, about health per se with the vaccine and funding the vaccines, et cetera, but even as importantly more in the medium and long-term. So One Health approach must be, hopefully, we need to still agree with the G20 at different levels, but one is the narrative to raise the awareness of the importance of One Health approach, but exploring in the different parts of the G20 agenda, what does it mean concretely? And there, the experience of Europe and to some extent Europe Africa will be important. So we must make sure that we move from the understanding and the narrative of tackling future challenges to a One Health approach to be quite concrete. And so there we will be getting the help also of organization, of course, like FAO, WHO and others who are also working together in an expert span and, of course, on making the One Health approach very concrete. So that's a very important cross-cutting issue that will always be at the center of the Italian presidency. How do we deal with the food systems and territorial, especially food systems in the G20 presidency? That's gonna be featuring, if you want, in two tracks, I would say, two work streams, thematic work stream of the G20. Of course, the agricultural ministers are an important part of the G20 meetings and agenda preparations and they will be trying to understand what is a common G20 position on the definition of sustainable food systems and they would like to agree on the possibility of contributing to the food system summit. So during the ministerial meeting of the G20 ministers, in Italy, they will be having certainly among one of the top three priority, positive, constructive contribution to the food system summit. Hopefully with a common understanding on what the food systems really mean because, of course, the G20 are very different countings of different sizes and challenges. Not only the agricultural ministers will deal with this, but of course the development working group, the SDG agenda is dealt with in the G20 through a special group and a special, it's called the development working group and there, I would say, there are three important priorities, thematic sub-priorities, that all of which are very important for food systems and that's very important. The Italian presidency is leading that way, but we already last week got in the general endorsement by the G20 Sherpas from the other countries that this is a very good direction. So three sub-priorities part of the development working group. First of all, food security and the importance of making sure the full multi-dimensional food systems everywhere contribute to food security. As others have said, the situation is very warning. It was already worsening food insecurity before and now with COVID is really dramatic. So that element of food security will be the object of decisions and discussion by the ministers of foreign affairs and the ministers of development for the first time they meet in a joint session for the first time in the G20 and the end of June in Matera and they will be discussing food security measures and coordination as a priority. So that's in itself very important. Then the Italian presidency will have other two priorities, innovative financing for sustainable development and using and working with intermediary cities as a crucial way to implement at the local level the SDGs. These, as others have said, are very crucial. As Leonor before and also colleagues from FAU mentioned, financing is a paramount without smart financing both public and private and also together public and private financing that cannot be really the transformation of the system that we all intend to and aspire to through the SDG. So there we hope that the G20 like started doing in 2020 the G20 will proceed further with the work for that relief in some of the emergency situations in low income countries so to allow the fiscal space to react to COVID and that type of spending hopefully to be devoted in particular to the building and back better and greener and not only achieve food security but try to put in place investment through that relief that can also target food systems transformation. Of course the importance of blending instruments will be crucial. So the Italian presidency under the innovative financing discussion will also facilitate the understanding of how the G20 can have a policy convergence on better aligning private and blended finance streams towards sustainability and that clearly will also benefit sustainable food system spending. So that is very important and will benefit from the example what the European Union is doing on its external investment plan and how it's supporting African food system transformation. The second priority I want to quickly mention is the intermediary cities. Of course, intermediary cities are very crucial in particular in Africa. There are the megalopolis but we know how many millions of people and increasingly so living secondary cities is a bit new. Obviously secondary cities are really at the connection between urban and rural area. They're very crucial for territorial food system. So we hope that by G20 supporting understanding what is the role of intermediary city both for the stronger food economy but also as a frontline reaction to COVID pandemic, et cetera, we can get a consensus amongst the G20 on strengthening the role of, as we just heard very amply from the African Union, the role of intermediary and local governments. And I hope that will also benefit strongly the building of food economies. Let me also say that not wearing maybe more my ECDPM or independent hat not talking as a government advisor. There are two free areas where the European Africa cooperation can get stronger and use this 2020 mega summit here. Really it's every summit, every topic you could possibly mention will have to be discussed by leaders at the global level this year and other colleagues today mentioned them. I think in all of these global fora at the G20, obviously South Africa is the only formal representative that South Africa is very positively bringing always the importance of the whole continent. So South Africa has a very strong voice partly. Thanks to South Africa and the G20 but even within the Tokyo summit, the food system summit COP26 Europe Africa can certainly have a progressive alliance approach to try by numbers, by type of solution, by gravity of some of the situations in Africa, et cetera put very strongly some of this agenda for territorial food systems and healthy diets and colleagues have already mentioned to it. I think not only we have global summits, we have the EU summit, so that is an opportunity to be very specific on what an alliance can mean. We have heard talking about an alliance on climate change between Europe and Africa, but why not an alliance on the importance of territorial food systems? I mean that type of pressure could make the Europe Africa partnership very important to influence global outcomes. And the more you can be specific at recognizing that of course Europe and Africa don't always have the same agenda, certain things will be different, but certain things are definitely of common interest. So on those common interests, I think there's a lot that Europe and Africa can do. And I would even add that the Fund to For Strategy as Verna said is really a quite advanced ambitious agenda towards sustainable food system. So why not using that quite amazing document to spare head, not only the G20 we can, but even in the conversation with the African Union to try to go towards the same direction and try to create an alliance and the Fund to For Strategy also speaks of green alliances to contribute with external action by Europe to important transformation of food systems worldwide. Why not using that Fund to Fork and green alliance aspiration to build the Europe Africa alliance starting with example, sectoral example like Coco mentioned before, but really going beyond and try to have the positive influence because trade ultimately and using the power of Europe as a major world, why the largest food market and food importer by using the power of trade policy in Europe in discussion and conversation with African colleagues could really make an incentives change also in international trade to help transform towards sustainable food system. So I would say that certain agenda items are very big. The last one I wanna mention is spending better the money that is this big agenda about repurposing agricultural subsidies. The Fund to Fork goes in that direction. It is a complicated debate. We actually hinted it also within the G20 but with uncertainty about the American administration and very different position. It is not easy to have a conversation how you can use existing money spent on agriculture to make it go towards more sustainable investment and less harming spending like certain chemical fertilizer, et cetera. That very advanced agenda could be discussed also in context of the Europe Africa because spending the money better that exists even before spending new type of money would be very crucial towards healthy diets and good system transformation. We're very happy to take questions both on these ideas about trade, the role of trade, the role of Europe but also of course about the G20 presidency. Thanks. Thank you, Francesco. With your intervention, we now complete this round with very sound information on the importance of the territorial approach for an inclusive food systems transformation. Before diving into the questions and answers session we have a video from the community of Portuguese-speaking countries, the CPLP. The CPLP is very much committed with the promotion of sustainable and resilient food systems. So let's find out more through this video how the territorial approach is used on the policy and governance level for the food system transformation in its member countries. Video, please. Food security and nutrition of the CPLP is the CPLP and the Food Security Council and nutrition of the CPLP with the CPLP. The CPLP is an institutional and adequate meeting to make the challenges that involve the transformation of the food system. It is a governance that articulates the different territorial levels and that has gained confidence from several actors that are resilient and that facilitates the constitution of partnerships with different typologies, thus increasing the efficiency and efficiency of the public action of the community. Joining the national councils, the institutional governance of the CPLP involves, yes, nine governments, millions of family farmers, thousands of small and medium-sized companies, hundreds of civil society organizations and countless universities. The CPLP countries have achieved an institutional architecture that is perhaps unique for the governance of food security and nutrition. It is multi-level, multi-sector, multi-actors and confirms the absolute priority for the full participation by vulnerable groups from a right-wing approach. And this participation is facilitated by self-organized mechanisms, from the local level to the global level, because we also participate in the work of civil society mechanisms along with the Global Food Security Committee of the United Nations. Therefore, this is clearly the materialization of a territorial approach for food security and nutrition and therefore for food systems. A coherent and articulated vision with the goals of the World Committee on Food Security of the United Nations. In 2018, in Cabo Verde, the second ordinary meeting of the CPLP consensus recognized its political priority in promoting sustainable territorial food systems. In the same year, in Portugal, the International Forum for relevant Territories for sustainable food systems that marked the commitment to develop activities in four pilot territories in the field of construction of sustainable food territorial systems. FISA is a national forum for relevant territorial systems for sustainable food systems. This is a great challenge for everyone, because it contributes to find us in healthy food, in the territories that are relevant, the ways of providing us with these territories in a collective efficiency strategy, with the support of FAU, the United Nations agencies, in this way, we can create opportunities for these territories. Of these pilot actions, the results, even more than the preliminaries, showed the importance of considering coordinated, inclusive and territorial approaches in the analysis of food systems and of a governance model to promote inclusive transformation. The political recommendations resulting from the work of the CPLP will be discussed by the CUNSAN, CPLP, contributing to the strengthening of policies at a local and national level. Wait for the experience and example of the CPLP to be shared with its development partners, such as FAU and the European Commission, marking the contribution of the community to debates and decisions that will take place in the world for food systems called by the UN General Secretary of Nations for 2021. Yes, please do stay with us for the questions and answers that we'll have right away. We still have around 20 minutes, 20, 25 minutes, and we have to finish. Unfortunately, time is running all the time, so to speak. So let's go right into it. For the first question, we have an oral question, actually, from Sara Rocha from Associação para Acupressão e O Desenvolvimento, a portuguese NGO. Sara, you have around two minutes and I would also like to ask for the panelists who are going to answer straight right after the questions to try to answer in also two minutes or so, okay, so that we may have time for other questions. Thank you. Go ahead, Sara. Good afternoon to you all. Thank you for creating this space for a giant dialogue in such an essential topic. Actuality is a 14-year-old non-governmental organization based in Portugal and its main priorities to work towards the promotion of inclusive food systems. We facilitate the civil society mechanism composed of more than 600 organizations and around 25 million family farmers from Portuguese-speaking countries and they formally participate in the Regional Council for Food Security and Nutrition, also in their respective national councils for food security and nutrition and we act while also in the United Nations Committee on World Food Security. This is the greatest singularity of the community of Portuguese-speaking countries, a multilevel institutional architecture for food governance with strong social participation from the local to the global level, allowing increased levels of territorial policy, coherence and alignment. Our activities include also the use of territorial approaches to formulate local public policies and their respective food governance mechanisms in the context of the ongoing decentralization process in Africa and other regions. These activities also include facilitating knowledge exchanges between local European organizations that work on the leader approach and the local stakeholders in other countries, a matter that in our view could be strengthened through triangular cooperation initiatives. In that sense, we would be pleased to put the following question to Mr. Leonhard Mitzi and Mr. Simplis. To what extent will both the farm-to-fork strategy and the future European cooperation with Africa clearly promote the development of local food policies and governance mechanisms? Thank you very much. Thank you, Sara. Perhaps Leonhard, good start and then we go to Simplis. If you... Thank you, thank you a lot. Thank you to Sara. Yes. Look, there was a debate in the chat on local short supply circuits, regional versus trade. And this is also a topic that Francesco can elaborate more. We evidently are not going or will ever go into trade bashing or globalization bashing. It's not our role, I think. And I'm convinced that trade is part of the solution, had there not been trade, the COVID lockdowns would have been even more complicated and there will have been more risks and breakdowns. However, our focus is to build back better and what we are going to do in scaling up our acrocology, in giving more emphasis to farmers' organizations. We are probably one of the biggest donors of farmers' organizations across the globe, starting from Africa and Asia, giving a voice to the farmers, gender mainstreaming, which is part of the prioritization of the indigenous instrument, and also focusing more on climate change resilience and adaptation and mitigation, more adapting to climate change. I think what our portfolio will do, and this is what we are discussing with our delegations these days, is to put an agri-food systems at the core of a Green Deal or a Team Europe initiative when this is identified as a priority sector. Now, let's be clear and honest. With COVID, the demands of prioritization, health, education, agri-food systems and beyond are enormous. Why? Because Africa will encounter major shocks in terms of indebtedness, in terms of low economic growth. We consider that a more resilient agri-food system is a core component of this process of recovery. I think organizations like yourself, Sarah, need to engage, you mentioned CFS, need to engage in the national dialogues, in the action tracks, and let's come up together with game-changing solutions, because these game-changing solutions, including acrocology, including inclusive agri-food systems, including gender mainstreaming, need to be scalable at the highest level in the UN Food Systems Summit. So, important that we engage also with the European parliaments so that there is a robust response by the EU and its member states. Over. Yeah, thank you. Simplice, perhaps you want to take the floor now to give a short answer. Thank you very much. I think I will not say much, apart from what Leonard has mentioned, just to emphasize that the EU and Africa cooperation in agriculture is quite well embedded in the report that I did mention and the political declaration, where you have basically four main axes. The first one is the territorial approach for income generation and job creation. We have sustainable land management and the climate action, transformation of African agriculture and development of an African industry and foods market. When you look at the various actions that we have agreed on, the strengthening the local institutions and the farmers organizations are key. So, and if you look at the Farm to Fox strategy, I think there is a full coherence between the objectives of that strategy and the action plan that we have with European Union as part of our agricultural transformation agenda. So yes, it will, there is coherence, the actions are there and we think that the full implementation of these actions will strengthen the local government and enhance the participation of local communities in the decision making. Thank you. Okay, thank you. We now also have a normal question by Mr. Celso Guerrido, Director of Planning of the Ministry of Agriculture of Santo Mayan Príncipe. Celso, go ahead. Good afternoon to all. Good afternoon. First of all, I would like to thank the organization for this event. I am Celso Guerrido, I am the Director of State Planning of the Ministry of Agriculture at Pesca Resonamento de Santo Mayan Príncipe, a small island located in Golfo de Guené, in the African continent. I would like to say first of all that at the level of my country and I believe that in some countries of the Portuguese official language, mainly, we have already started to have the issue of territorial approach as a priority due to our characteristics. Mainly, for Santo Mayan Príncipe, which is an island with double insularity, it is important and we see the territorial approach, although it is a question that has been raised for 15 years, but for us it is a new question. And we would like to see these questions in the essence of our public policies for the safety of the nutritional community. To say that through the CPLP, of our articulation mechanism between the civil society government, we have created, due to the importance of the issue of nutritional food security for our country, we have created a national health and nutritional council. This council is presided by the Prime Minister to facilitate articulation of various actors. In this sense, we would like to see our public policies having the territorial approach because we think it is the best way to guarantee a sustainable development. That is why my question would be the following. For the African Union, for the European Union, how do they think that they should include our policies, especially, I speak in the name of Saint-Méu-Prince, the question of territorial approach due to the fact that we are a country as I said, solar, and with some deficiency in terms of frame and capacity to continue these activities that we find extremely important for the sustainable development of our country, in the case of our country, and in some African countries, in our culture? That is my question. Thank you very much, Celso. Thank you very much. So, Misi, and Simplice, again, the floor is yours. It has to start with Leonardo and then Simplice. Yes, Celso. What I will do with immediate effect is I'll be in touch with our delegation handling South Omer and Príncipe. South Omer and Príncipe is an island. I come from an island. It's not a Portuguese island because I come from Malta, but I understand critically the demands of island states in terms of connectivity, in terms of food security, in terms of what a territorial approach is in a small island. And I think it's also important that we look into the sensitivity of island states because South Omer and Príncipe is not Mozambique and it's not Angola. So the reality is different. Here we are speaking very generally. So I think it's important that we look how South Omer and Príncipe is prioritizing agri-food systems in its programming. And what I'll make sure is that what we are discussing today, there is clearly a sensitivity around gender, a sensitivity around small farmholders, around research and adapting and reacting better and anticipating risks because islands will confront more climate risks. That is going to be critical in terms of production potential and in terms of vulnerabilities. So if we can construe a narrative also which reflects small island states, including South Omer and Príncipe and also target our support in a way which is sensitive to the realities of islands, I think we can do also a better job and evidently, this will be done in close collaboration with the wrong-based agencies. You mentioned FAO, you mentioned WFP, evidently, EFAT and also others. So it's important that we have a one UN approach, a holistic approach to be also sensitive to the needs of islands like yours. Go ahead, Simplis. Thank you very much. I think one, what should be important for a country like South Omer and Príncipe and other countries on the continent is to ensure that they have developed their national agricultural investment plans that are aligned to the Malabo Declaration. I think that that is the first entry point and Leonhard and other partners around in this panel will agree with me that that is the entry point for agricultural investment. You need to develop that plan. Unless you have a clear agricultural investment plan, you do not have a start-up point. So this is important. The second, we often talk about evidence-based policy but what is critical in having an evidence-based policy is the availability of data, which more often at local level do not exist. So my plead here to FAO and the European Union, as we are thinking of pushing forward the implementation of the territorial approach, we need to invest in local data systems because unless we have that, we will not have enough evidence to build the policies that is required to advance the territorial approach. Take it. Thank you very much. I would like now to turn to Mr. Andreas Turner, who also has a question. He would like to take the floor. Andreas is member of the EU Economic and Social Committee. So please go ahead with your question, please. Yeah, thank you. Hello and good afternoon and congratulations to this interesting conference. Yes, I'm a member of the EEC and as probably many of you know, the EEC has been for years already at the forefront of promoting comprehensive EU food policy, providing healthy diets from sustainable food systems. And within our committee, we even established a dedicated thematic group on sustainable food systems where we continue to discuss these relevant topics. Leonardo, I think he was it to refer to the COVID-19 pandemic as a wake-up call, a wake-up call for change maybe, because this crisis has really underlined that the fact that getting food from farm to fork cannot be taken for granted actually. And this has demonstrated the interconnectedness of actors and activities in agriculture throughout the food system. Yeah, even food security, I think cannot be taken for granted in Europe. I think before COVID, nobody would have thought about this that serious, but even in Europe, it's not for granted. So it proved actually that strong local structures are important, especially in times of a crisis. And against this background, I think it's very important that we go for inclusive territorial approaches. They can be a crucial solution here. And I think strong regional production and processing structures are an important element to contribute to food security at local and at the same time also on global level. And on top of this, they have actually the potential. So those regional, strong regional production structures, they have the potential to also contribute significantly to their sustainable development goal agenda. So I think therefore we should do our utmost to support strong local production structures. And it has been mentioned already, for example, support the family farm model. Another example, we need to provide transparency and information for the consumers to empower them to make more sustainable buying decision and thus to support the local or the regional economy. So I think there are several ways to go. And my question for the panel actually would be, we are not starting from scratch. So there are already several good initiatives out there. Some regions are further than others, but there's actually no need to reinvent the wheel. So how can we best learn from each other? And thank you for this interesting debate. Thank you, Andreas. Thank you very much for your question. I would suggest perhaps to give the floor to Benjamin Davis or perhaps to Francesca Rampa so that we could have other panelists to approach your question, which doesn't mean of course others cannot participate, but maybe this could be a good solution, Benjamin. Sure, very briefly, no, thanks for the question. And I think there are lots of good experiences. Obviously we've mentioned, a number of it have been mentioned today. The TP4D is another important experience. There's, and I think it's important to, these are all kind of processes, local processes, which often take place out of sight, let's say. And so I think it's very important the role around case studies and discussions, South South learning, learning, what's going on in different countries with kind of similar contexts. But I think it's also very important that there is a lot of experience, but territorial approaches are actually quite complex. They're quite difficult, right? And I think we've been talking about them today as if it's something kind of a straightforward policy you just implement, but they're actually very complex processes in which the incentives are often not aligned, right? And so, and they're often more an art and understanding kind of how to align those incentives as much of anything, right? And these are, you know, sectoral incentives among the different ministries that might be involved between the different levels of government, whether it's federal, regional, local, obviously all the political issues. And then clearly in political issues in terms of how to make this as much of a, let's say a transparent process where, you know, group collected organized groups, whether they're produce organizations, around women, youth, et cetera, can participate and local communities can participate in these processes, right? And so that's exceedingly complex. Now we've heard from simply say, for example, that there are big pushes towards decentralization, for example, in Sub-Saharan Africa and other regions, this opens a lot of space. It opens a lot of space for this to happen, but it's also extremely complicated. And I think there's a lot more need for support. And again, it's soft skills more than hard skills in terms of making these processes work. Thanks. Thank you perhaps, Francesco. Would you like to add something? Yeah, so now to make maybe a food system approach a bit more practical, I wanna point to a couple of things. One, in order to have a territorial approach to a food system, as we heard, you need data. It's very complicated in climate, nutrition, everything seemed to be there, water, but there are a number of efforts from FAO and also ECBPM. I will also put a response in the chat to have the reference to a simplification of the food system approach, because I know that practitioner, policymaker, farmer still, they understand what the food system is. Using a full food system approach is a bit complicated, but we at ECBPM, also others like FAO have tried to simplify. So that would be important to try to build an analytical base and a capacity in every country to really go beyond the narrative of a food system and being able to use it in a very practical way that is not just for researchers and academia. And secondly, I would look with interest this year at the food system summit process, not only because the food system summit is important itself, but also the model of food system dialogues that were mentioned also during the panel are very interesting because you can't build a food system a territorial approach by definition top down. And the food system summit dialogues is taking an approach of letting anyone contribute, not only the governments, but anyone who is willing to show the case of their territory and why the system is already being transformed positively or should be transformed differently, they can organize a dialogue and that would be taken into account the lessons from such a dialogue anywhere in the world would be taken into account for the formal preparation of the food system summit. That's a very interesting model. And anyone should really look, get engaged on the food system dialog.org, see how to do it. It sounds a bit chaotic because anyone in the world can come up with a dialogue but ultimately, maybe a bit of a bottom-up approach would be useful to learn from others if you read the dialogues from China or whatever Peru, you end up finding interesting things also from Africa and vice versa. So I would also encourage people to really dive into the food system dialog process. Thank you. Thank you Francesco. I would like now to give the floor to Ms. Carolina Estrella from the Institute to Camões. You know, changing from Portuguese to English it makes a very funny accent. I'm so sorry for this. So Ms. Carolina Estrella, go ahead and put your question. Thank you. Thank you, Isabel. Let me first congratulate FAU for the organization of this seminar and particularly today's speakers. Before I present my question, let me just introduce myself and give you some examples of projects that work in sectors where the challenge is concerning territorial food systems and healthy diets on stands. My name is Carolina Estrella and I'm currently head of Strategic Partnership Unit at Camões, the Portuguese Development Agency whose mission is to propose and implement the Portuguese Cooperation Public Policy. In this sense, Camões promote finances, co-finances, and manage several programs and projects in partner countries with a focus on CPLP countries. Among these, I would like to highlight those which being EU projects are under our responsibility in any direct management and linked with today's discussion. So the first one, the support program for the Global Alliance Against Climate Change in Timor-Leste, GCCCA, which operates in territories impacted by climate change with the objective of improving the sustainable management of natural resources and increasing the food resilience of the most vulnerable populations. Second, the integrated support for rural development project, ATIVA, in the regions of Bafata, Tombaldi, and Kinara, territories in Guinea-Bissau, where most than 70% of the population is below the poverty line. Thirdly, the project for threatening resilience and food security in Angola, Frezette, whose objective is to contribute for the reduction of poverty and vulnerability to food insecurity in the southern province of Angola, and also a project to support export-oriented agricultural value chains in so-to-may principle. These projects are just to name a few examples and represent a global budget of around 65 million euros and increasingly need, with no doubt, an inclusive territorial approach. However, although our need and priority is to reinforce this approach in our current and future projects, we still face several challenges. Let me just say two of these challenges. First, due to the difficulty adjusting ongoing projects, either due to the contractual requirements under delegation agreements, or even sometimes, due to the need to reinforce the theme in the EU delegations in countries. Secondly, related to the need to build our staff's technical capacity on this approach. So my question to the speakers is what measures to take in short term to prioritize these approaches in ongoing EU-funded projects as threatening capacity building in this area. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, thank you so much, Carolina. I was looking at time and time runs really, really fast. So unfortunately, we'll have Mr. Leonhardt now and then I'll have to make the concluding remarks. Just let me just say that I feel a little bit less worried because I've seen that most of our panelists have been answering to the direct questions and I thank you so much for this. So perhaps, Leonhardt, you would like to give a word now to answer to Carolina. Thank you, Ezebel and Carolina. I think I know the Frezan initiative and project in Angola. We have good cases, but we need also to be honest amongst the international community to say what's working, what's not working, and what the problems are in a frank and transparent way. I think what the Portuguese presidency, what FAO are doing, and what maybe across the institutions we could do in the run-up to the UN Food Systems Summit and I know that the Portuguese presidency is planning something in the run-up around May. Why not use a bit our legacy of the period 2014, 2020? In the Portuguese speaking countries, the realities that were also mentioned in South Omer into more or less than Mozambique. I visited Mozambique, it's one of the few countries that I visited since I joined INPA four years ago. I think there are good cases, but we need also to be smarter in terms of how we tackle territorial approaches and something which we didn't discuss in detail is the role of digital. Because digital is part of the solution, but it's not an automatic solution. We saw it in COVID in terms of e-commerce, in terms of connecting communities, even in buses. Sometimes e-commerce didn't even work, let alone in maybe far-flung countries.  This is what Calibata is asking and because we know what the problems are, we know what the solutions are. That's a question also of identifying and making it happen and identifying what are the bottlenecks so that what's blocking ideas, initiatives, processes, even from a bottom-up approach, similar to what Sara said in terms of NGO engagement and stakeholder involvement, we deblock them and we let private investment flow, inclusive private investment and good policy-making to accompany this process. Thank you very much. Thank you. As I was saying, I just feel a little bit more relieved because I saw that our panelists have gently answered some of the questions that were here in the question and answers box and I'm sure they will be available to provide further information if contacted. So a big thanks to our panelists for this most informative exchange and also for their presentations. Thank you so much also to Atuar, to the NGO, the Portuguese NGO from Quimbre for providing the translation today, which is obviously something that we very much appreciate and we are grateful for. Time runs and obviously we would all love to stay here longer and talking to each other, but one thing is for sure, this is just one first series of dialogues that we are having with the Portuguese presidency. So we will be continuing this dialogue, this exchange and I'm very happy to be able to already announce that a second dialogue will be held in the end of the first semester on the topic of family farming. So if you want to be certain, if you want to be certain to receive the invitation and it will be wonderful to have you there, please do stay tuned and follow the FAU on Twitter, FAU Brussels at FAU Brussels and sign up to the newsletter on the FAU Brussels website where you will find updated information on United Nations Food Systems Summit. So once again, thank you very much. It has been an honor, a pleasure, great pleasure to be here with you, to be invited to moderate this wonderful event and thank you also for your patience and I hope everything was good in terms of my capacity to deliver the message as a moderator, but the big stars were you, the panelists and all the people who joined us today. So many people for more than one hour and a half. So thank you so much and have a nice day. See you very, very soon.


For submitting ideas, the best place to go is saveaward2012.ideascale.com. That's where you can input your ideas through a form that's on that site that goes directly to OMB and maintains your anonymity. For more information on the award, particularly how it impacts the Navy and Marine Corps, go to navy.mil and there's a little button right on the homepage there.


The Maritime Operations Center in Djibouti is the epicenter, the command and control section of the operations that occur between the Navy and the Coast Guard. The Maritime Operations Center controls the boarding teams, they brief the boarding teams on the situation and they give them direction. The exercise control group, the ECG for the exercise, is there to maintain the exercise to ensure that the exercise is operating in accordance with the schedule and the scenarios that are being built and just to kind of give over our guidance during the exercise.


So we've reached the end of two very exciting days. At least I was thrilled and I learned a lot. And it was the company of a lot of intellects, really going through the two days. My task at the end of the conference, I always do that, is try to do a little fast, of course, summary of what we've gone through, just to recapitulate a little bit. But I will not take a long time. I always think it's gratifying to see how much we've gone through together. So we started with the speech of Frank, come hell or high water, addressing the risk of climate, environmental related litigation for the banking sector. Now, I had the impression that for many this was new. A lot of people did not realize how important this topic is. And I think it was a good idea of him to bring it here. So he offered an insightful overview of the rising importance of the climate related litigation. And I encourage you to look into the report he was indicating based on the findings of this NGFS report. He noted also how the climate related obligation stemming from the Paris Agreement are trickling down from the level of national states to the private parties. And this includes corporates, but also goes back to banks. And banks are not immune from these developments and climate litigation is becoming more and more a risk that puts in danger the soundness of banks. And therefore, he was saying banks should have more ambitious and realistic plans to control and reduce their exposure to the risk and symmetrically our supervisors to take care that banks take the necessary action. He also said another thing. He said that he cannot exclude that certain rules are already considered to be existing by course that will be soon be asked to pronounce. So duties of banks to also implement the Paris agenda. We move then to a very, it might be interesting topic as well, the preliminary references and how this instrument has been a unifying element for European law. But also what came out in the very challenging first presentation was that it was a challenge to the legitimacy of the supremacy principle. This supremacy principle of course underlines the relationship between the court of justice and the national courts in the implementation of all these procedures and in this particular case. And the argument was made that there would not be a legitimation by people because this is not written in the treaty. That view was opposed. I also personally think differently. But I think it is always very refreshing to have these issues raised, of course. One important point that I like was that the remark that the referral is a tool that has empowered lower courts to go straight to the ECJ without the filter of the higher courts. Whether the higher court likes it is another matter. But the question that was raised is whether this has perhaps also over-empowered them because the traditional, the national courts then feel more like you courts than as national court and sometimes are in a difficult or perhaps attractive position to have to choose between the European pronouncement and the national pronouncement. And that could be politically at least or sociopolitically an issue or an interesting topic. This controversial position brought to a very animated discussion. We all participated. And several members also the panel passionately intervened to defend the supremacy of your law and the legitimacy. And what was indicated was or reminded was the very existence of the declaration number 17, which is attached to the Lisbon Treaty, the legal service opinion, but also the reference to Article 14 of the treaty on the function of the union that speaks of equality of member states, equality that you can never achieve unless you have a single interpretation because otherwise there is different treatment in different member states. Also it was mentioned for more than a half a century this principle has now been contested. Now that particular panel, I heard someone telling me that there were voices probably from the central banking lawyers. I suppose that this was very academic. But we noted online that this was the peak of the attendance. So the average attendance of a whole conference was 100 people online. But here there were 269 just for you to be aware. So I come to panel two. Maybe the panelists of the first panel are still around. So they can be happy about that. The panel two was on independence, accountability, proportionality in the context of the secondary mandate. Also this was opened by controversial thesis. Alexander Thiel had to leave a little bit early, but he was mentioned several times over the two days because he introduced the idea of the political legitimacy necessary in order to apply or to implement the secondary objective and in which way to do it by reference to perhaps a recommendation. He also argued about the double standard of independence that one could imagine to apply. That also provoked some debate. Some people were not excluding it. Others were quite provoked by it. And then among the various points raised, it was also observed that it would be a little bit difficult to distinguish the functions in which the central bank was acting sometimes. And so then to decide which type of independence is it admissible that there is an interference from the government, yes or no. The idea was also to give back the decision to the political fear, a decision which would be allegedly political in nature, but then you might render it to politicize monetary policy decisions as well. Of course, I cannot address all the points because I just wanted to bring some points that somehow remained in my mind. We had then the keynote speech of Professor Stefan Habert on the protection of fundamental rights in the European multi-level system. I found that this speech was a very nice balance between showing how the courts work well together and showing how they actually disagree. Explaining that disagreement is actually okay, provided it is not constant. It's probably quite from a practical point of view a good approach, but I just noticed this. It was anyway very nice that first of all that he came and then that he spoke to us about fundamental principles that as lawyers are for us anyway, really the basic form, all our work in the end. But he also mentioned, and you all heard that, that the Constitutional Court of Germany was the first one to recognize the supremacy also on constitutional law. However, they cut the borderline between constitutional law, European law in a way that others have then criticized in the group. He finally concluded that hierarchy is maybe not the best criterion or principle to describe the relationship between the courts. And this we know is the question of pluralism or the question of hierarchy is a very important, very debated one. So we come to today, well, I spared the dinner.  In the third panel, the first of this morning, the question of the illegal war lunch by Russia against Ukraine was in a way underlying all the discussion about the central bank immunities and the sanctions on central banks or on the foreign reserves of central banks. Then we had the pleasure to hear the US experience, which I found described in a very clear way because it's a complex system. But the discussion also clarifies that there is not a super, super clarity between on the two concepts of state, what is a state and central bank, what is central bank, which type of, so all these are areas in which there is always a borderline or a great border that of course allows us and allowed us this morning to have very nice conversation. Let me move to panel four. This filling the gas central banks competent authority legislative frameworks, it was focusing on the classification and practical developments relating to ECB opinion. It was found that the opinions actually carry more weight and influence on legislation. The closer the matter is to the competence of the ECB. There was also a proposal to look at opinions as a form of soft slow instruments filling the gaps in legislation, which in turn raised questions as to opportunity to differentiate between those cases where the ECB is called to enforce the law and those cases where the ECB is one of those on which the ECB is in a way enforced. And then the accountability and justice ability of the ECB opinion were considered, taking as a means of comparison the case law on the lack of procedural requirements. I come to the fifth panel, which is in which the incorporation environmental consideration, the supervision of prudential task was dealt with. This is basically the article 11 of the treaty that was analyzed. The looming question was whether the climate change should be framed under the secondary objective or rather under the primary objective. I personally question whether this is a good discussion for supervision as we are in a different realm, but in any event the inclusion and incorporation environmental considerations are also for the supervisory part. The question here is always price stability and financial stability are the two aspects in which all these considerations come also into consideration. The interesting element was the time dimension. It has been observed that in the discussion that the prudential measures that support the fight against climate change or the brown penalizing factor for example, one should not see a trade-off between the price stability and financial stability on the one side and the environmental protection on the other, but rather between the appropriateness to intervene in the shorter or having to intervene later, but much more massively to manage a situation that will be much more complicated for banks. And also the proportionality principle was identified as the device to settle this kind of trade-offs. The last panel, sorry because I could not yet print it, but you all have heard it was dealing with the monetary sovereignty. This concept was explored from different perspectives. On the one hand, from the one of our small states whose biggest concern is the currency substitution. This can happen easily when you have a case of hyperinflation or in a situation in which the state somehow allows or even guarantees another currency or gives legal tender to a cryptocurrency. Another perspective was the one of a monetary union, so the story a little bit of the EMU was reminded in which the states have transferred the sovereign competencies to the central bank, to the European central bank. The criticism was made that central bank perhaps has made the two restrained use of that sovereignty and looking more inside than outside and only very recently the interest in putting the euro into the international monetary system again has been revived so to say. And the third perspective was the one of the development of the central bank digital currency by some central banks and the question was asked whether the reason, the very reason is maybe maintaining the monetary sovereignty. That was the final panel and I think it is a very, very interesting topic that will still have to be explored the monetary, the central bank digital currency as you know is still in study so there will be further development and the geopolitical situation is such that this question will not leave us. So we've reached the end of our conference. I introduced the conference yesterday if you remember wishing to all of us candid discussions, provocative questions, spirited debate. I think we had that and I think we can be happy and we really created an open exchange that we were aiming at. Thank you to all the participants. Thank you to all the speakers in particular because they have put a lot of energy into this. Thank you for the team that in the background really has made it possible for all this to happen. There are so many details, so many things to check, et cetera. I cannot name the whole group but I would like to name one person that is Antonio Rizzo who is the coordinator, the one that has been behind every step and every problem to be solved and together with the rest of the team has made this possible, so thank you very much. Maybe we can clap for them and also our photographer of course. So we've reached the end, let us conclude the conference. I wish you a nice trip back and I especially wish you not to forget this in three hours but to continue the nice relationship, the contacts you had, the ideas that have started here at least until next year when I hope we will meet again. Thank you very much.