The IPCC for food? Spotlight on the HLPE, a group of international experts on food security
Expert view24 July 2025
The high-profile IPCC brings together scientific knowledge on climate change from around the world. Its summaries and scenarios form the basis for international climate negotiations. A similar institution exists for food security: the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE-FSN). Discreet and completely independent, the HLPE has already produced some twenty reports since it was founded in 2010. Akiko Suwa-Eisenmann, the current chairperson, and Patrick Caron, a 糖心Vlog researcher and HLPE chairperson from 2015 to 2019, tell us more.
To ensure the resilience of our food systems, we need to consider all the links in the chain, from production to consumption, via processing and distribution. Here, a Senegalese market gardener 漏 R. Belmin, 糖心Vlog
The HLPE has a mandate to identify priority challenges for the Committee on World Food Security (CFS). Every four years, the panel of experts provides CFS with a report intended as an inventory, combining scientific and non-scientific knowledge.
The dialogue between the HLPE and CFS serves as an international science-policy interface on food security, just as the work of the IPCC and IPBES informs political negotiations on climate and biodiversity.
In 2008, food riots broke out almost to everyone’s surprise. The Committee on World Food Security (CFS), an intergovernmental body of the United Nations, did not see the crisis coming. As a result, CFS was reformed, giving rise in 2010 to the HLPE-FSN (High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition), a group of international experts mandated to inform and alert CFS on emerging, priority and persistent food securityissues.
The HLPE informs and recommends, while CFS makes policy decisions in consultation with member States, civil society and the private sector. This is a set-up that works and proves that “multilateralism is not dead”, according to Akiko Suwa-Eisenmann. Over fifteen years, the HLPE has produced numerous reports and summary documents, sometimes on subjects that are taboo in the international arena, such as agroecology in 2017.
Akiko Suwa-Eisenmann is an economist and research director at INRAE. Specializing initially in trade policies in so-called developing countries, she became interested in the social and economic impact of trade openness on populations: income, consumption and well-being. Akiko Suwa-Eisenmann has been chairperson of the HLPE since 2023. She is also a professor at the Paris School of Economics.
Patrick Caron is a 糖心Vlog researcher and an expert in livestock systems and territorial dynamics. He has particularly worked on analysing the role of the territory in rural transformations, notably in Brazil, southern Africa and the Middle East. In November 2015, Patrick Caron was appointed Chairperson of the High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) of the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS), a position he held up to October 2019. He is currently President of Agropolis International and Chair of the CGIAR Board.
What flagship issues are currently being addressed by the HLPE?
Akiko Eisenmann: The prime aim of the HLPE is to facilitate understanding of the challenges surrounding world food security. It is a huge issue, affecting everybody, and there are masses of information out there, some good, some bad. It is extremely difficult to gain a clear picture of what is really happening. At the HLPE, we endeavour to make sense of the disorder and bring out the priorities.
To do that we need data, and this is currently one of our pet issues. With the decline in international aid, most data gathering is no longer funded. This is the case with the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, which has been collecting a whole range of indicators since 1985, such as food market prices or rainfall. It helps identify areas at risk and assess the number of people threatened by hunger. As I speak, that network is closed. Likewise for the Demographic and Health Surveys, nationally representative surveys on health and nutrition conducted since 1984 in 90 countries. If the food situation of people is unknown, it is impossible to come up with policies…
This year, the HLPE published a background note on the financial flows linked to food security. We often think of public investment, but most flows are private and come from small farmers. They are the first to invest in their farms. Yet that is often overlooked, and above all, it is not quantified. Neither is the cost of inaction alongside public investment quantified: for example, not investing in healthy food for the population is bound to have an impact on health, with chronic illnesses and costs for public hospitals.
Upstream of the Climate COP to be held in Belem next November, we have also prepared a note on “Tackling climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation through the right to food”. In our view, through the right to food it is possible to align the challenges surrounding the climate, biodiversity, and the environment in general. For example, from experience we know that some biodiversity conservation policies can have a negative impact on the food security of populations living in the vicinity of protected areas. Succeeding in thinking about all these challenges together is key to ensuring the success of public policies.
The way the HLPE operates is both original and unique. What more can you tell us?
Patrick Caron: Unlike the IPCC, HLPE reports and recommendations do not involve any political negotiations. This is the main difference. The IPCC itself is an intergovernmental body, and its summary reports are subject to political approval by its members. Each word is carefully weighed. For its part, the HLPE drafts and publishes independently. Nonetheless, the HLPE does not act on its own initiative: the reports produced are commissioned by CFS, and the requests are negotiated within CFS. Likewise, it is within CFS that the recommendations of HLPE reports are discussed and will be involved in policy recommendations. The pre- and post-report aspects are thus organized within that political arena.
The HLPE comprises a steering committee with fifteen members, all world-renowned scientists. The members are volunteers for a two-year term, renewable once. The HLPE also has a network of over 2000 experts, and public consultations are held for each report, first on the subject itself, then on the first draft of the report. These public consultations are open to the private sector and civil society. For example, a large group of farmers can express an opinion that the HLPE is obliged to take into account.
Last May, scientists, political figures and members of Senegalese civil society met in Dakar to discuss the sustainable transformation of agrifood systems. At the core of the discussions was the national structuring of science-policy interfaces, spaces for exchange between two worlds that sometimes struggle to agree. This provided an opportunity to talk with Astou Camara, a researcher at the Senegalese Institute for Agricultural Research (ISRA), about the need to more effectively connect research and policy.
A. S.-E.: The HLPE operates in such a way as to take on board new knowledge beyond scientific expertise. The 2007-2008 crisis revealed that weak signals had not been picked up, hence the importance of these public consultations, which are open to non-scientific groups.
This openness ensures that we have an overall view. As scientists working with high-level policymakers, it is our responsibility to ensure that the voices of the most disadvantaged are heard, and to shed light on the unexpected effects of public policies. We are aware that some people never reach the negotiating table, as they operate in circles that are informal, illegal or discriminated against. Nonetheless, those people are just as much involved in the evolution of food systems, and overlooking them is neither fair, nor fitting.
The HLPE will be taking part in the UN Food Systems Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 27 to 29 July 2025. What will your message be?
A. S.-E.: This Summit comes four years after the very first UN Food Systems Summit. The aim is to take stock of what has happened since 2021 in transforming food systems, and to see what still remains to be done by 2030. For the HLPE, this is an ideal moment to call for stronger links between research and political intervention. Moreover, we’ll be holding a specific session on science and the fact of relying on knowledge and innovation to ensure fair transformations.
Through our reports, we continue to prove that food is not just about production and consumption, but that all the links in food systems need to be taken on board: processing, distribution, trade, etc. If we take the example of school meals, they are sometimes the only guaranteed meal for at least one member of the family, in this case the child. Canteens are also stable outlets, for both producers and processors. In times of crisis, school meals are therefore a crucial lever capable of contributing to food system resilience. Here, public funding backs up private investments, and that calls for very good policy coordination, notably between education, health, trade and agriculture, etc.
P. C.: Science plays a key role in negotiating policies to strengthen collective intelligence, and this is a long-term process. Being present at this Summit is therefore an important signal, and it is to be hoped that this will continue beyond major international summits, which remain one-off events.
In this way, the HLPE constantly dialogues with CFS, to which it reports, and benefits from a high level of trust, due to its independent nature and the quality of its reports. The recommendations do not always lead to immediate policy decisions, but all our output is public, and we believe that we have often succeeded in shaping the policy agenda, with the aim of contributing to a sustainable and fair transformation of food systems.
La transformation des systèmes alimentaires ne se décrète pas d’en haut, elle se construit dans les interstices des territoires, entre initiatives locales, dynamiques nationales et engagements globaux. Le dernier numéro de « Perspective » démonte les illusions du « passage à l’échelle » et propose une approche résolument ancrée dans la réalité des transformations.
