Feeding 9 Billion: The Future of Food Security
Challenges to food security created by climate change, conflict, and a global pandemic have increased pressure on governments around the world to address these imminent threats. Global inflation has further complicated the situation as rising costs of food have affected both the developed and underdeveloped world. What are the links between global hunger and instability? What preventive measures can governments, the private sector and communities take to transform food systems to be more sustainable and resilient? We can achieve a world free of hunger, but we must also recognize that that hunger is a security problem and access to food is a human right.
Johanna Mendelson-Forman is an Adjunct Professor at American University’s School of International Service. She is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center, where she heads the Food Security Program. Her frontline experience as a policy maker on conflict and stabilization efforts drove her interest in connecting the role of food in conflict, resulting in the creation of Conflict Cuisine®: An Introduction to War and Peace Around the Dinner Table, an interdisciplinary course she teaches at American University.
As an Adjunct Professor leading this innovative curriculum, Johanna challenges her students to explore new ways of looking at diplomacy, conflict resolution, and civic engagement to understand how food, as a form of Soft Power, can drive these issues in the 21st Century. In establishing this link between food and conflict, Johanna developed a new interdisciplinary platform examining why food is central to survival and resilience in conflict zones. Today her research focuses on gastrodiplomacy and social gastronomy, the use of food as a means of social impact and investment to communities at risk.
Mendelson-Forman is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Les Dames d ’Escoffier. She holds a J.D. from Washington College of Law at American University, a Ph.D. in Latin American history from Washington University, St. Louis, and a Master of International Affairs, with a certificate of Latin America studies from Columbia University in New York.
This event is organized in partnership with the U.S. Embassy in Amman