JCU Hosts Transatlantic Policy Dialogues on Food Security
On December 4 John Cabot University welcomed Rodney Hunter, Chargé d’Affaires at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. Agencies in Rome, and Ambassador Stefano Gatti, Special Envoy for Food Security at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for its second annual Transatlantic Policy Dialogues. The theme of this year’s workshop was “Food Security after Ukraine.”
Following welcome notes by JCU President Franco Pavoncello and Professor Michael Driessen, the Director of JCU’s new M.A. program in International Affairs, Hunter and Gatti offered introductory keynote remarks on the theme of food security. In his introduction, Chargé d’Affaires Hunter highlighted the precarity of global food chains since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, as well as the support that the United States government has directed to alleviating it. The United States remains the largest donor country to the U.N. food agencies in Rome and has given over fourteen billion dollars in food assistance since the beginning of the conflict, supporting programs like the Black Sea Grain Initiative to mobilize action to end global hunger.
Special Envoy Gatti, for his part, also focused on the dynamics that have exacerbated food security and global human suffering both since the beginning of the conflict but also long before that. Gatti explained in detail the importance of Italy in the fight against food insecurity, remarking that although it may not be a great power when it comes to geopolitics, Italy is a great power when it comes to the politics and production of food. He described the growing attractiveness of the Italian food model, whose Mediterranean diet, duly famed, has sustained the livelihood of millions of small farms and farmers in Italy, increasing biodiversity and food diversity along the way. A growing number of developing countries has seen in this Italian model a hopeful path for the future, and a way of protecting, promoting and sustaining local food traditions and agricultural models. The US-Italian partnership on Food Security, he argued, was particularly important, especially here in Rome. Italy and the United States, Ambassador Gatti observed, are two of the few countries that have Special Envoys on Food Security, and their work together in Rome has become vital in the response to the food crises since the war.
Following the keynote remarks by the two diplomats, JCU Professor Simone Tholens moderated by a roundtable conversation by a panel of experts. The debate included Ronan MacNamara of the World Food Programme, Ruth Hanau Santini of the University of Naples Orientale and Roberto Menotti of the Aspen Institute.
Ronan MacNamara, from the World Food Programme, offered insight into the unusualness of the current crisis situation for the U.N., which has entailed trying to get food out of Ukraine instead of the other way around. He extolled the importance of the Humanitarian Principle and lamented how polarization and international conflict had made U.N. food assistance much more difficult to achieve. Professor Hanau Santini offered a reflection on the weaponization of food in this conflict and other conflicts, and the way in which states and international organizations perform both “food solidarity” and “food superiority” in their postures and policies. Finally, Roberto Menotti spoke about the ways in which renewed geopolitical conflict had eroded the possibilities of win-win policy problem-solving capability, revealing not just the benign face of globalization, but also its risks.
About the Transatlantic Policy Dialogues
The John Cabot Transatlantic Policy Dialogues is an ongoing policy workshop that aims to evaluate the evolving geopolitical challenges and opportunities facing Europe and the United States from a transatlantic perspective. The exercise is held annually each Fall semester. It includes a public panel with keynote speakers followed by a small panel or workshop discussing a common strategic challenge chosen in advance. The Transatlantic Policy Dialogues seeks to take advantage of John Cabot’s natural position as a bridge between the U.S., Italy and Europe; draw on its international, scholarly expertise; and serve as a hub connecting policymakers and the diplomatic community from across the Atlantic and Mediterranean who are stationed in or visiting Rome. The theme of the JCU 2022 Transatlantic Policy Dialogues was “Italy, the United States and the New Transatlantic Moment,” and featured keynote lectures by Joe Donnelly, the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, Pasquale Terracciano (the General Director for Public and Cultural Diplomacy at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and presentations by Erik Jones (European University Institute), Mario del Pero (Sciences Po), Cynthia Salloum (NATO Defense College) and Loredana Teodorescu (Istituto Affari Internazionali).
Watch a recording of the “Food Security after Ukraine” talk.
