THE STRENGTHENING INTERNATIONAL MUTUAL LEARNING IN FOOD AND NUTRITIONAL SECURITY: THE ROLE OF BRAZIL’S G20 PRESIDENCY

Abstract

The Global Alliance against hunger and poverty launched by Brazil’s Group of Twenty (G20) Presidency builds on a long history of G20 efforts to address global food and nutritional insecurity. However, unlike previous initiatives, which focused primarily on the G20’s contribution to addressing hunger in low-income countries, the Global Alliance has the potential to innovate significantly, strengthening mutual learning for domestic policy action within G20 countries, while enhancing North-South, South-South (SSC) and Trilateral Development Cooperation (TDC). Hunger and poverty are not limited to lower-income countries. Severe food insecurity increased in every region in 2021, including in high-income areas and across all G20 countries. With reference to the experience of the United Kingdom, we argue that given the universal framing of the Sustainable Development Goals, the fact that the world is currently off track to achieve the goal of Zero Hunger should encourage G20 countries to support multilateral action at the global level while intensifying policy learning to support their own domestic efforts to tackle these challenges. In recent decades, TDC and SSC enabled many Global South countries including Brazil to engage in knowledge-sharing around effective policies to tackle hunger and poverty. We draw on two examples that build on Brazil’s experience with strong civil society and academia engagement; and propose a strategy for enhancing TDC’s potential to foster mutual learning on hunger and poverty reduction among G20 countries, as well as action by G20 members to support other countries and strengthen United Nations (UN) led multilateral efforts. We also discuss risks and opportunities for the Alliance to support scaling up local and national innovations to address entrenched and intersecting inequalities.

Keywords

• poverty
• hunger
• ssc/tdc
• mutual learning
• universality
• g20