Defying Global Governance: Emerging Alternatives Models

Over the past few decades, in the face of growing fragmentation in the global governance of food systems, many CSOs, social movements, UN Special Rapporteurs and academics have identified clear alternative paths for how our food systems could/should be governed to achieve more just, sustainable and equitable results. This paper explores how these emerging alternatives, many of which find their base in legal doctrines, and the actors who support them seek to challenge and to fundamentally alter the dominant narrative of global governance. In particular, it examines efforts to pursue incremental and systemic change through the introduction of new legal norms at the reformed-CFS and at the UN Human Rights Counsel, as well as to expand the scope/use of extra-territorial human rights obligations. These models, and their use of alternative legal doctrines, offer an important opportunity to reflect on the possibility for radically recalibrating the governance of food systems.