The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) mandated its High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE-FSN) to identify emerging issues and guide priorities for action (CFS reform Document, 2009). In October 2013, the CFS requested a note on critical and emerging issues* affecting food security and nutrition (FSN). The request was made in the context of the CFS’s ongoing discussion on the selection and prioritization of its activities.
Tis note is updated roughly every four years and feeds into the CFS Multi-Year Programme of Work (MYPoW); previous editions were published in 2017 and 2022.
The HLPE-FSN is now preparing its fourth note on critical, emerging, and enduring issues (CEEI) to inform the 2027–2030 MYPoW. As part of this process, stakeholders are invited to provide input through a public e-consultation on the first draft of the note (V0 draft).
The draft note identifies ten key issues affecting food security and nutrition (presented in no particular order):
- Advancing the post-2030 Development Agenda through food systems transformation as the 2030 Agenda concludes, progress towards the SDGs remains off track, particularly for Zero Hunger (SDG 2)
- Achieving food security and nutrition in climate crises: Climate impacts extendbeyond FSN, disrupting transport and distribution systems, and undermining the livelihoods of farmers, fishers, and other food system workers (Owino et al., 2022).
- Food security and nutrition, and the three Rio Conventions: Biodiversity, Desertification and Climate:strengthening the integration of FSN into the implementation of thethe UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Convention to Combat Desertification.
- Geopolitical uncertainty and polycrises: how to anticipate and mitigate impacts on FSN. While difficult to measure, their consequences are severe and irreversible, threatening to worsen malnutrition, especially among children in low-income households affected by damaged infrastructure and restricted trade.
- International trade for food security and nutrition: it plays a central role in global food security by helping countries compensate for domestic production shortfalls, diversify food supplies, and stabilize prices.
- Corporate concentration in food systems: corporate behavior can disproportionately affect markets, ecosystems, livelihoods, and agency.
- Digital innovations and artificial intelligence (AI) for healthy, sustainable, and equitable food systems: these technologies are reshaping everything from farm inputs and risk forecasting to logistics, pricing, marketing, and consumer choices, yet they are not neutral tools—how can they support resilient and equitable systems?
- “One Health” as an integrating framework for food security and nutrition: it underscores the need for an integrated approach, as over 60% of emerging human diseases are zoonotic, many originating in wildlife; food systems are central to interconnected risks across human, animal, and ecosystem health.
- Affordability of healthy and nutritious diets to ensure food security and nutrition: our diets remain neither healthy nor sustainable; affordability constrains adoption, especially in low-income settings, and is increasingly challenged by climate change, conflict, and food price volatility
- Agency for food security and nutrition: grounded in human rights, agency is essential to realizing the right to adequate food but is often overlooked in policy, requiring stronger focus on power, voice, inclusion, and governance, especially in the face of intersecting shocks like climate change, conflict, and market volatility.
Provide inputs, suggestions, and comments through an e-consultation by using this form by 4 May 2026. (Comments are welcome in English, French and Spanish)