Devex Dish: At UNGA, the UN turns 80 — but there's no cake, just reform

When Nelson Mandela turned 80 in 1998, he surprised the world with a wedding, tying the knot with Graça Machel before a guest list stacked with global dignitaries. Queen Elizabeth II’s big 8-0, in 2006, came with fireworks and a televised children’s literature party at Buckingham Palace. The United Nations, meanwhile, is marking its 80th anniversary with a looming identity crisis and gut-wrenching reforms — many of which are the result of pressure from an octogenarian-in-waiting, U.S. President Donald Trump, age 79.

“What is the purpose of the United Nations?” Trump asked in his address to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday. “It has such tremendous, tremendous potential. But it’s not even coming close to living up to that potential.”

Indeed, these existential questions of purpose, future, and potential are hanging over this year’s UNGA, where sweeping reforms are on the table. What emerges could redefine the institution itself and reshape its food and agriculture portfolio — some of the most essential work it carries out.

At the center is UN80, the institution’s marquee reform initiative, calling for cost savings, mandate reviews, and structural changes that could see agencies merged or folded. Workers are unsurprisingly skeptical, with at least 6,000 jobs on the line. But Guy Ryder, U.N. undersecretary-general for policy leading the reforms, said the moves will be strategic: “It’s a thought-through, reflective approach to the way we have to invest our time, effort, and resources in the future,” he told Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar. And though the World Food Programme, Food and Agriculture Organization, and UNICEF don’t face closure or mergers under the plan, they are laying off staff, slashing food rations, and rethinking their programming as the number of people facing food insecurity worldwide swells.

Calls for U.N. reform aren’t new. In his second year leading WFP under the first Trump administration, David Beasley tried to team up with U.S. and U.N. leaders to push through sweeping changes. “Nobody was really willing to take it on,” he told Raj at Devex’s Impact House on the sidelines of UNGA. It was a “lost opportunity.”

Beasley, a Republican and former governor of South Carolina, went on to raise more money for WFP than anyone else — in part thanks to his straight-talking style and knack for explaining hunger in human terms. “No one cares or understands what IPC level 3, 4, or 5 means. Explain what it means — are people starving?”

Still, this Trump administration is another era altogether. Case in point: Yesterday, Trump called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” saying that climate predictions, including those made by the U.N., were made by “stupid people.” So for the U.N. at 80, it’s less about cake and candles than about whether it can survive the knife-edge politics cutting into its core.

Read: Top UN official defends reform agenda as genuine, despite skepticism

See also: David Beasley on straight talk, UN reform, and making America good again

Background reading: UN80 and the incredible shrinking United Nations (Pro)

Watch: Can the UN really reform itself? (Pro)

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ABCs of NDCs

Speaking of jargon — there’s one acronym we’re tracking closely: NDCs, or nationally determined contributions. These climate plans show how countries will work to limit global warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius — and countries were supposed to submit them by February, with a final deadline at the end of this month. Yet only about 50 countries have done so — though the past few days have brought a flurry of new submissions.

One big issue we’re watching is the extent to which food systems, which are central to both climate mitigation and adaptation, are integrated into the NDCs. Lucky for us, a consortium of folks — the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, Mercy For Animals, the Center for Biological Diversity, EAT, and Lewis & Clark Law School’s Global Law Alliance — are creating scorecards to track exactly that.

The initial assessments, which look at the NDCs of a handful of countries, show some movement on food systems transformation — but also some blind spots.

“Key findings highlight significant gaps: many countries focus primarily on agricultural production while neglecting critical areas such as food distribution, consumption, and waste reduction,” Oliver Camp of GAIN wrote on LinkedIn. At the same time, he noted that some countries are emerging as leaders — Switzerland, for example — with explicit language on shifting diets toward more plant-based foods.

And while waste production has long been neglected, as Camp points out, the U.S. has actually seen rare momentum — and even bipartisan agreement — to tackle it. When the Trump administration took office, Dana Gunders, president of ReFED, a nonprofit focused on reducing food waste, had a hunch the issue might resonate. She turned out to be right.

“We’ve seen the EPA just a couple weeks ago launch a Feed It Onward initiative. We’ve seen the Food Date Labeling Act reintroduced into the Senate with bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate — something we’ve never had before,” she said at a Food Tank event in New York on Monday. “We can save people money. Food costs are high. Well, let’s help people stretch their food budgets.”

Read: All eyes on missing NDCs as Climate Week and UNGA converge

The early warning gets the worm

When droughts or floods hit, food systems are often the first to unravel — yet just 1% of funding is directed at anticipatory financing that could help prepare for those shocks. “If we can change that equation, we can save enormous amounts of money by being more in the prevention rather than the cure business, said Simon Winter, former head of the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, citing WFP data at a Rockefeller Foundation event Monday in New York.

FAO on Tuesday laid out what it hopes will become one of its flagship initiatives to close this gap: The Financing for Shock-Driven Food Crisis Facility, a mechanism designed to release funds when hazards strike so countries can act before food crises spiral. Developed with WFP and UNOCHA and backed by the G7, the facility now seeks $100 million in startup funds. “Every dollar invested in anticipatory response can yield savings of up to $7, while delivering better outcomes for people at risk,” FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu said. Whether that funding materializes in today’s tight budgetary climate is another matter.

Indeed, agricultural technology is advancing so rapidly that longer lead times and sharper forecasts are now within reach — and the sector should be pushing harder to explore them. The challenge, though, is ensuring those tools work together. “We have specialists on satellite data, terrestrial data, social media, and other types of media for insights,” Winter said. “But all this needs to be brought together into the hands of the local stakeholders who are the most committed to solving their own local problems.”

Winter praised the transformative potential of AI in agricultural technology, a point echoed by others at UNGA, including Bill Gates. At the Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers event Monday — its annual showcase for progress and challenges on the SDGs — Gates said one of his four “dreams” for how AI will transform the foundation’s work was in agriculture: “The dream is that the poorest farmer in Africa, in their native language, would have better agricultural advice than the richest farmer today in the United States or Spain.”
Further reading: As famine data dries up, can AI step in?

Rethinking nutrition

Nutrition is also on the agenda in New York this week. A high-level meeting on noncommunicable diseases, or NCDs, is set for tomorrow. Experts hope it will finally push governments to give these chronic conditions the attention — and the money — they deserve.

NCDs kill more than 43 million people globally each year, and the need for investment is clear in both prevention and treatment. “Denying treatment is not an option” for millions already living with chronic illness, WHO’s Dr. Saia Ma’u Piukala said at a Devex Impact House panel. Yet prevention itself is complicated. “When I think about prevention, I wonder how much control do these populations really even have over the way they live their lives,” said Anjoli Anand of Doctors Without Borders, pointing to food deserts — or places with few healthy, affordable food options — and the widespread availability of ultra-processed foods.

At the other end of the nutrition spectrum are children suffering from acute malnutrition, where the window for intervention is measured in days. A coalition of aid groups urged member states to prioritize child wasting at UNGA, warning that aid cuts have pushed the crisis to unprecedented levels. To get lifesaving food to those most in need, Navyn Salem, CEO of Edesia, is stitching together unusual coalitions — from United Airlines and Airlink to IsraAID — to move shipments into crisis zones such as Gaza. At a Devex event on the sidelines of UNGA, she said 185,000 boxes of Edesia’s lifesaving peanut-based paste for malnourished kids have been stuck in its warehouse for months, awaiting clearance from the Trump administration. “Children can’t wait,” she said, underscoring why creative partnerships are becoming essential when governments stall.

Read: Experts push for action in tackling NCDs crisis
See also: Key to surviving US aid cuts is new partnerships, says Edesia CEO 

Chew on this

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announces $1 billion investment in global forest fund. [Reuters]

The EU plans to delay its anti-deforestation law for another year. [Politico]

Indonesia’s president is being urged to end a massive free meals program that sickened at least 6,000 children. [The Telegraph]

Dispatch from 2,200 feet over Gaza: What I learned from airdropping desperately needed food aid. [Atlantic Council]