Re-energizing Hope and Collaboration: Participating in Global Goals Week

Global Goals Week and Climate Week are officially over. Still, as the craziness settles down, I wanted to take a moment to share with you my experience and perspective as a participant, and specifically, as a participant in my role as a UNA-USA Global Goals Ambassador for SDG 15, Life on Land. 

As a member of UNA-USA, Global Goals Week is (of course) a paramount week of excitement and reflection. Then, overlap Global Goals Week with Climate Week in New York, and my role as an Ambassador for SDG 15, Life on Land, becomes especially relevant. I knew that getting to New York City as a full-time student would be challenging, so I decided to find virtual events that would align with my interests and inspire my work as I begin my year as a new Global Goals Ambassador. There were thousands of events planned throughout the week; it took me hours to decide which ones I would attend. But, my activism, research, and studies at Wellesley College guided me in making this decision. My interests at the moment center heavily on food justice and sovereignty, specifically on how to use environmental health research and community organizing to ensure access to safe, healthy, affordable, and culturally relevant foods. So, I decided to primarily attend events centered on these topics. 

Though I could go into detail on many “aha” moments across these events, I wanted to discuss one of the virtual webinars I attended, because it has led me to re-envision what my role as an ambassador for Life on Land could look like this year. This Web Event called “The Climate Crisis and Cities,” gathered food system officials from prominent cities across the world to discuss how global collaboration and support can be used to re-design and re-imagine what food systems could look like. I chose to attend this panel–hosted by the City Food Policy Project–because I am interested in how my grassroots organizing and environmental research in food justice can be interpreted and implemented on a regional and international scale. The panelists – all women might I add – spoke of challenges with sustainable waste management on city and regional scales, their successes in integrating healthy foods into their educational systems, new green agricultural plans, and more. Hearing them speak of their frustrations and hopes for the future was affirming, for I too, in my capacity as a student and environmental organizer, had struggled with these similar issues (though on a much smaller scale). And, I could

see that as the panelists talked, they were gaining new ideas and re-imagining systems as they listened to and fed off of each other. Seeing repeated challenges with food justice across scales of influence, and hearing the invigorating sharing of ideas emphasized to me the importance of collaboration. In this panel, I saw the possibility of using inter-level and global collaboration as a mechanism for change. 

Thus, I began to reflect on what collaboration as a UNA-USA GGA could look like, especially in tackling an issue like food justice. Interestingly, food justice impacts many Sustainable Development Goals. Food justice matters for addressing hunger (SDG 2). Healthy and accessible food in schools is important in ensuring a quality education (SDG 4). A sustainable food system is essential for Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG 11). The list can go on and on. This realization, though it may seem obvious, has made me excited to work with other GGAs (and anyone else who is interested) to think about food justice and sovereignty from an interconnected and transdisciplinary point of view. I see huge potential in uniting people’s passions to make decisive change, and if I were to take only one lesson out of Global Goals and Climate Week, it would be that change is necessary and scary, yet very much possible. Witnessing the energy and excitement of the week has renewed my commitment to the SDGs and re-lit a fire to work interconnectedly to make change. Does this sound interesting to you? Reach out to me at elizamarielynch@gmail.com. I would love nothing more than to work with you to envision progress together.