The Covid-19 pandemic has shed light on the fragility and unsustainability of global and local food systems.The pandemic has worked as an accelerator of thesense of urgency to take bold commitments towards the transformation of food systems in order to bring back SDG2 (Hunger eradication) on track.

A consensus exists that structural transformations towards sustainable, resilient, and equitable food systems include the way in which food is produced,accessed, distributed, valued, and consumed. It is acknowledged that sustainable food systems require that economic, social, cultural, and environmental dimensions and their trade-offs be fully integrated in policy and investment planning. They also entail ashift from one-size-fits-all solutions to local and context-specific approaches.

They finally call for a major change in the mindset and stronger collaboration of the involved public andbusiness actors, as well as civil society. These are the challenges posed to the global events and summits that are planned to take place in 2021 and 2022.

UNCDF has a long experience with both direct and indirect interventions in food systems and food security. Over time its initial focus on the support to local governments’ investments in public goods and services through its Local Development Fund(LDF) has been expanded to include the question of how public expenditure can stimulate Local Economic Development (LED) through the promotion of productive activities in agriculture and agricultural value chains.

Together, LDF and LED contribute to promote a conducive environment for public and private investments. In 2015, UNCDF launched the Finance for Food programme (F4F),with the purpose of providing a coherent and comprehensive framework for promoting financial support to food systems (FS) and food security and nutrition (FSN) related interventions.

F4F is conceived as an innovative approach to address the emerging challenges resulting from the multidimensional and territorial nature of FS and FSN. With its focus on finance, F4F provides a strategic contribution to an issue that is generally considered a policy orphan in the conventional approaches to food systems.

With the growing momentum on localizing SDGs and in line with the ongoing process towards food system transformation, UNCDF's experience in Food Security and local finance theory of change can play a pivotal role in accelerating SDG2 achievements.

Please download the "Role of UNCDF in Transformative Finance ' Brochure to find out more about UNCDF's innovative approach to Food Security.