This year, the United Nations is convening the first Food Systems Summit aimed at empowering people to leverage food systems to deliver progress on the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Building a food system that is healthy, sustainable, and equitable will require buy-in and collective action from key actors across sectors and ages. With youth under 30 accounting for more than half of the world’s population, young people have an instrumental role to play in driving food systems change. Never has a generation been so mobilized on the issues of food and environment and never have these global movements seen such momentum.
Recognizing the role and right of young people to be involved in leading food systems change, the UN has placed youth at the centre of the Summit process, both as vice-chairs of the five Action Tracks and by identifying “youth empowerment” as a priority for the Summit.
As Lana Weidgenant, youth vice-chair for Action Track 2, puts it: “Youth are in the leadership and decision-making for the Food Systems Summit, which is significant. And it is not only us [in the Summit leadership], a young person from anywhere in the world can contribute to the Summit outcomes.