In the context of the World Sustainable Food Capital 2021, Barcelona hosted the 7th MUFPP Global Forum between 19th – 21st October 2021, on the topic of Growing Resilience: Sustainable Food to tackle the Climate Emergency. The past year has been a challenging one. The 7th MUFPP Global Forum has been an excellent opportunity to (re)connect, exchange experiences, challenges, knowledge, and best practices, to inspire and get inspired with the shared goal of fixing our urban food systems while addressing the climate emergency.Since the critical UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) will be held in Glasgow in November 2021, the 7th MUFPP Global Forum in Barcelona becomes extremely strategic to raise cities’ voices on the food climate nexus.
The gathering was a great success in terms of participation, bringing together city delegates from over 100 cities, experts and civil society organizations who are working on food systems transformation for further sustainability and inclusion. Many experts and institutions took part in the Forum: one hundred and fifty speakers coming from all over the world and 40 political leaders representing MUFPP signatory cities.
In the plenary session on the state of the Pact, participants had an overview of the great work that the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact membership has implemented over its 6 years of activity to animate a growing number of cities (today counting 217 signatory cities with 19 new cities in 2021 only, among which Tokyo, Sydney, Los Angeles, Bangkok). The Milan Pact Mayors represent over 400 million people worldwide. In addition to the plenaries, several side events and parallel sessions covered a variety of food systems-related topics, with emphasis given to urban food policies for healthy citizens on a healthy planet; food infrastructure to promote a local food system transformation; and to communication tools and strategies to coordinate actions and enhance citizens’ involvement and public support.
The Forum in Barcelona saw the launch of The Barcelona Challenge for Good Food and Climate. Drawing on the C40 Good Food Declaration and the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact Framework for Action, The Barcelona Challenge is an innovative tool and a call for cities to engage in the transformation of food systems to tackle the climate emergency.
You can find the full list of recordings from the Global Forum on our YouTube channel.
You can read the full report here
