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Reconfiguring Food Systems Governance: The UNFSS and the Battle Over Authority and Legitimacy

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Abstract

The UN Food Systems Summit was an ambitious and hotly contested event that brought competing approaches to global food governance into relief. In this article, we unpack the rival visions that circulate around how food systems should be governed, focusing on two issues that we feel are at the heart of these divergences: authority and legitimacy. We illustrate how both corporate-philanthropic and food sovereignty networks are struggling to establish epistemic authority of food systems as well as produce legitimacy through very different approaches to participation and accountability.

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Notes

  1. Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism. What’s wrong with the Food Systems Summit? https://www.csm4cfs.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Common-analysis-EN.pdf.

  2. Da Silva, José Graziano. 2019. 41st Session of the FAO's Conference. http://www.fao.org/director-general/former-dg/da-silva/my-statements/detail/en/c/1200387/.

  3. Terms of Reference of the Scientific Group. 30 March 2020. https://sc-fss2021.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Terms_of_Reference_web.pdf.

  4. Declaration of the People’s counter-mobilization to transform corporate food systems. 2021.

    https://www.csm4cfs.org/thousands-mobilize-to-call-for-food-systems-that-empower-people-not-companies/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Van Vollenhoven Institute, Leiden Law School, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Matthew C. Canfield

  2. Rural Sociology Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Jessica Duncan

  3. Centre for Agroecology, Water, and Resilience, Coventry University, Coventry, UK

    Priscilla Claeys

Authors
  1. Matthew C. Canfield
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  2. Jessica Duncan
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  3. Priscilla Claeys
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Correspondence to Matthew C. Canfield.

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Canfield, M.C., Duncan, J. & Claeys, P. Reconfiguring Food Systems Governance: The UNFSS and the Battle Over Authority and Legitimacy. Development 64, 181–191 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41301-021-00312-1

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