Show Notes
In this first episode of Reset the Table, Ambassador Ertharin Cousin discusses the differences between today’s global food security crisis and the 2007-2008 global food-price crisis, and ways global responses should differ accordingly. Ambassador Cousin addresses the rise of non-communicable diseases related to poor diets, the impacts of climate change on global food security, the rise of food insecurity in urban areas. Caitlin Welsh and Ambassador Cousin also discuss the ways food insecurity mirrors patterns of racial inequalities in the United States, the U.S. response to food insecurity during the Covid-19 pandemic, and what is required of a comprehensive global food security agenda that addresses these concurrent challenges.
More from Reset The Table
The President of the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Dr. Alvaro Lario, joins CSIS Global Food and Water Security Program Director Catilin Welsh to discuss the outcomes of recent milestone meetings for agricultural development financing, and how momentum from these events can help carry IFAD’s priorities into COP28. President Lario and Director Welsh explore the mechanics of IFAD’s innovative financing model and discuss the considerable commitments that countries around the world have already made towards IFAD’s upcoming replenishment cycle. They wrap up the conversation reflecting on President Lario’s achievements in the first year of his presidency—and what he aims to accomplish in the coming year.
In our first episode of Reset the Table season 3, Dr. Lawrence Haddad, Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), sits down with CSIS Global Food and Water Security Program Director Caitlin Welsh to explore food systems approaches to today’s challenges to food security and nutrition. Dr. Haddad discusses the interconnected relationships between water, nutrition, and agriculture, ways GAIN’s programming works to address them as we head into COP28—and what it’s like to discuss these issues with Prince William of Wales.
Caroline Smith DeWaal, Deputy Director of EatSafe at the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), joins Caitlin Welsh to discuss the centrality of food safety to food and nutrition security, and how it is often overlooked in global food policy frameworks. Ms. DeWaal explains how EatSafe became a Feed the Future project addressing food safety in traditional food markets in Ethiopia and Nigeria. Ms. Welsh and Ms. DeWaal wrap up the final episode of Reset the Table’s second season discussing the relationship between climate change and food safety, and how this was addressed at the recent Codex Committee on Food Hygiene meeting in San Diego.
Lauren Phillips, Deputy Director of the UN FAO Inclusive Rural Transformation and Gender Equality Division, and Anna Herforth, Senior Research Associate at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Principal Investigator of the Global Diet Quality Project, join Caitlin Welsh on this episode of Reset the Table. Dr. Phillips explains the growing gap between food insecurity among women and men, and how this gap was measured in the latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) report and the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES). Dr. Herforth describes how the recent data released by the Global Diet Quality Project can be disaggregated to measure women’s dietary diversity around the world, and its relationship to food access and women’s roles in food systems.
Jo Puri, Vice President of the Strategy and Knowledge Department at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) sits down with GFSP Director Caitlin Welsh to discuss IFAD’s priorities ahead of COP27. Ms. Puri explains how the UN agency measures its investments' impacts on indicators such as resilience, economic mobility, and nutrition in the rural communities it serves. Ms. Welsh and Ms. Puri wrap up the episode with a discussion on IFAD’s strategy to elevate the importance of biodiversity to global agriculture at COP27 in Egypt and at COP15, the Montreal Biodiversity Conference, in the coming months.