Mutual accountability for food security and sustainable development

Food security is a multi-stakeholder, inter-generational problem that is difficult, if not impossible, to solve working with a single group of individuals. The determination of who is food secure and how secure they are is a collective choice made by societies and enforced through public policies, regulations, enforcement procedures, social norms, business practices, and other formal and informal influences on individual choice and empowerment. Achieving food security, in the sense of the Sustainable Development Goal Two (SDG2), ‘zero hunger’, is a systemic choice that members of society can make and implement accountably, both individually and collectively as a society. This chapter grapples with this critical question of reaching solutions. It emphasises strengthening the capacity of the policy system to generate and adhere to multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder solutions to the complex development problems addressed by the SDGs. Mutual accountability is essential to continuing and accelerating food security and sustainable development progress. Where applicable, the mutual accountability process can improve accountability in many existing systems, including national and global food systems, systems with market-based accountability, and certainly those with significant elite capture or even predation on the weak. There is overwhelming evidence of the importance of mutual accountability in multi-stakeholder settings and a growing body of best practices for implementing mutual accountability. These processes should be central to investing in any and all SDGs.