‘The broad shape of the story is the same’

YaleClimateConnections

Apr 10, 2020

Denial of the facts. Delayed political and policy responses. A relentlessly accelerating crisis. Those are just a few of the parallels between the climate crisis and the coronavirus pandemic.

WATCH LIVE: What is Juneteenth? Your questions, answered

PBS NewsHour

Streamed live 67 minutes ago

Amid growing protest movements against racial inequalities and police brutality against black Americans, Juneteenth is taking on more significance this year. But what is the holiday, how did it begin and what is its relevance today? Join us on Thursday, June 18 at 2:00pm ET, as Mark Anthony Neal, professor of Professor of African and African American Studies at Duke University, and PBS NewsHour’s William Brangham take your questions on Juneteenth.

Which Percentage of People Is Older and Younger Than You | Health Intelligence

and

Event: 2021 UN Food Systems Summit | SDG Knowledge Hub | IISD

In 2021, the UN Secretary-General will host a Food Systems Summit with the aim of maximizing the co-benefits of a food systems approach across the entire 2030 Agenda and meet the challenges of climate change.

As a key contribution to the Decade of Action to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals, the objectives of the Food Systems Summit are to generate momentum, expand the knowledge and share experience and approaches worldwide to help countries and stakeholders tap the benefits of food systems for all people. The Summit will seek to inspire global public mobilization and actionable commitments to invest in diverse ways to make food systems inclusive, climate adapted and resilient, and supportive of sustainable peace.

The Summit is expected to yield the following outcomes:

• a political declaration outlining principles for sustainably transforming food systems, broadly endorsed on a voluntary basis by all stakeholder groups;
• a set of significant commitments and partnerships to action with measurable outcomes, to be made voluntarily by different actors;
• a policy framework and a diverse set of practical tools to manage trade-offs, to design food systems transformation strategies and to develop multistakeholder platforms or governance models for food systems; and a
• voluntary system of follow-up and accountability that would allow for the continuation of sharing experiences and results and incorporate new metrics for impact analysis.

date: 1 July 2021 [tentative]
location: TBA
www: http://www.fao.org/3/nc131en/nc131en.pdf
https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/personnel-appointments/2019-12-16/ms-agnes-kalibata-of-rwanda-special-envoy-for-2021-food-systems-summit

…(read more)

Food-matters,

NY Times Reporter Who Obtained John Bolton’s Book Ahead Of Release Discusses What’s In side | MSNBC

MSNBC

Jun 17, 2020

Chief White House correspondent for the New York Times Peter Baker reports on the tales of troubling behavior by Donald Trump that former National Security Adviser John Bolton writes about in his book. Aired on 6/17/2020.

Joe: Mark Zuckerberg Is “Lying To The American People” | Morning Joe | MSNBC

MSNBC

Jun 17, 2020

Joe Scarborough discusses the anti-government movement that advocates for a violent uprising and how it has flourished on social media in recent months. Aired on 6/17/2020.

Global Panel – An independent group of influential experts with a commitment to tackling global challenges in food and nutrition security.

The Panel is an independent international group of leaders who hold, or have held, high office and show strong personal commitment to improving nutrition. It was formally established in August 2013 at the Nutrition for Growth Summit in London and is funded by the UK Department for International Development.

The Panel is co-chaired by His Excellency John Kufuor (former President of Ghana) and Sir John Beddington (former UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser) and works across food, agriculture and nutrition, bridging gaps and examining food systems in a wider socio-political and economic context. This is described in the Panel’s technical brief on food systems.

Panel members convene international and regional high-level round table meetings and use their extensive networks in governments, civil society, academia and industry to bring together and influence policymakers from different sectors in the food system.

Their influence is delivered through evidence-based technical and policy briefs, the Foresight Report and tailored country/regional papers, that are produced by the Global Panel Secretariat in London, Panel members and experts. These documents contain recommendations for potential policy interventions at a national and regional level.

…(read more).

Food-matters,

Pandemic sows seeds of direct-to-consumer models for plant-based food | Greenbiz

Fable Food, which packaged its products for restaurants, created pop-up date night deliveries to sell supplies directly to consumers.

Fable Food

After years of cultivating a restaurant-first strategy, Impossible Foods has leapt from its first national retail launch in Kroger into a direct-to-consumer channel in the course of just a few weeks. Impossible announced last week that consumers can buy its plant-based ground protein directly from the company website.

“It was one of the things on the list,” said Jessica Appelgren, vice president of communications at Impossible Foods. “But COVID made it go to the top of the list.”

Impossible joins a handful of other plant-based food companies that drastically have shifted their business strategies due to the pandemic. Exponential Foods, a plant-based meat company focusing on Mexican-style meats, was set to launch in U.S. grocery stores when the pandemic hit. Suddenly its retail partners were more focused on staying afloat and adjusting to new social distancing regulations than launching a new product.

“We had direct-to-consumer in mind,” Exponential Foods CEO Iván Jiménez said. “But our idea was to wait a little bit because of the complexity in taxes, and we wanted to avoid that for a while.”

Selling products online to an individual is much more complicated than selling wholesale to a grocery store. Each city, state and country has its own sales tax to consider, and then Exponential Foods also had to quickly develop a specific pricing strategy that still allows for a strong retail price later.

The pandemic changed that timeline. The company’s intended product for U.S. grocery stores already was produced and waiting for consumers to buy it. Jiménez decided that tackling the tax and pricing issues of selling direct to consumers was worth it, and Exponential quickly launched a direct-to-consumer channel on Amazon and the company website.

…(read more).

Food-matters,

Food Systems Dashboard

 

Food Systems Dashboard
Describe. Diagnose.Decide
Food systems data for improving diets and nutrition

Food-matters,

GAIA W13: Final Inhale Session

 

This Friday, June 19th, we will come together for the final GAIA Inhale sessions, during which we will be grounding ourselves to move forward. During the 10am and 8pm EDT sessions, we will build on last week’s conversation with Angel Acosta and Melanie Goodchild and deepen the exploration of our own blind spots that have been enabling systemic violence for too long.

For the 12 noon EDT session, we will welcome Eileen Fisher as our esteemed guest, as we look at how institutions deal with integrating shadows into the evolution of the system. You may want to consider joining for this special session along with the 10am or 8pm EDT.

Zoom Information

Find all Zoom information here and as follows (join according to first name initials):

10 am & 12 noon EDT

A – G: https://presencing.zoom.us/j/94093515304

H – N: https://presencing.zoom.us/j/96648587919

O – Z: https://presencing.zoom.us/j/97228441387

8 pm EDT

One link for all: https://presencing.zoom.us/j/94093515304

We look forward to celebrating our GAIA journey together, and preparing the soil for the next cycle of renewal.

Warm regards,

Antoinette, Otto, and the whole GAIA team