Plates, People, Planet now | Goals Lounge

Hi, everyone. Distinguished colleagues and friends, welcome to the Goals Lounge. Thank you for joining Plates, People, and Planet. So let me start by asking you a few questions. You all have a red and a green card. A green card means you agree, and the red card means, well, you disagree. So, ready? Everyone got their cards? Okay, excellent. Who in the room feels they have a pretty healthy lifestyle? Green if you have a healthy lifestyle, red if you're okay. So some are a little, like both, have their good days and bad days, and some are, you know, it seems like a pretty healthy group here today. And who thinks they could do a little bit better? Okay, yeah. Fully expected to see a green. I think we can all do a little bit better. And last question for you. Have any of you felt that making the right lifestyle choices is just so much more difficult than it needs to be? Okay. Overwhelmingly green, but a few reds. So, well done, you all. So today we're going to explore the everyday choices we make, the food we eat or the clothes we wear. Decisions shape our own health and the health of our planet. And without further ado, I'm going to invite Maya, Hazel, and Fredrika, who is our moderator today. Welcome to GALS Lounge and come on up.

Good morning, everyone. Long week. I hope you've been having some healthy week, although it was very stressful so far. Good morning to you.

Good morning.

I am delighted to moderate this Planet on Plates, people, and Planet with two wonderful ladies, Maya Pan, CEO of Maya's Ideas and FAO champion. and Aza Wallis, doctor and founder of Food Medic. So once again, welcome. Maya, your work spans fashion, food system, biodiversity, and climate. And there is one thread which is among all of them, which is creativity. What makes creativity so important when we think about sustainability?

I mean, I love this question because I think a big issue that we deal with across so many sectors and industries as it relates to sustainability, as it relates to health, is siloing and thinking about all of these separate disciplines as being kind of in their own bubbles when really they have so much to learn from each other and have so much intersection and overlap. And I think creativity is really key for innovation in all of these sectors. I think it's one of the most important and critical tools is to really have creative and innovative thinking. So when we're talking about fashion or we're talking about food, they both require innovation in order to become more sustainable, to become more equitable. So whether you're talking about similarities between the raw material stage, for example, We need to drive innovation for the health of our soil, for example. That's something that both the fashion industry and food and agriculture will both benefit from. We need to drive innovation around how the laborers within both of those disciplines and industries are treated as well. There's so many ways that creativity can really shape our approach. And I think it's important to look at these disciplines, how they can learn from each other. And I really love too, this makes me think about how FAO is going to be celebrating World Food Day very soon. And I really love the theme of innovating today and nourishing tomorrow, because I think it's kind of key to that that idea of creativity and innovation being so necessary for both of these disciplines. And then again, looking at how industry leaders can learn from each other to both further their triple bottom line, ESG goals, and so much more.

Wonderful. Being in the fashion industry, I fully agree on what you say. So the green and the red, so I'm definitely on the green side. Your work has specific focus instead on challenging some of the narratives surrounding women's health. We need that, both women and men. Including your last book, on the female factor. Why did you choose to focus on this and to us? Thank you very much for doing so.

Yeah, it's completely needed. And it came from the recognition that most of our medical research has historically been based on men and male bodies and extrapolated to women as if we're just small versions of men, which we are not. We are very different. And I learned about this well past medical school when I was working as a doctor. And I think as a woman and a doctor to many women, it really enraged me, and I wanted to write about it. So I wrote The Female Factor to give women the language they need to advocate for themselves, to tell them that what they're experiencing may be common, but it doesn't make it normal, and also give them the tools to support their health. And it's opened so many conversations. I'm just so grateful for that.

Fantastic, and thank you again for writing about that. Maya, you work, you just mentioned FAO, and you are a champion of FAO on food system, but also on the fashion industry, right? And what do you see as the bigger connection between this different sector and what can they learn from each other, as you were mentioning? when it comes to more sustainable systems. We're talking about two big systems here.

Yeah, two very big systems. And I think so many big learnings that can come from those two systems. So I think some great examples, again, like we're looking at soil health, we're looking at water consumption, we're looking at you know, pipeline, production pipelines, we're also thinking and taking into account the full life cycle of what you wear, what you eat, what happens when, you know, food is thrown away, what happens when something you're wearing comes to the end of its life cycle. Those are the kind of parallels that I think need to be really assessed and I would hope that more folks from both the agri-food system and from the fashion industry would be able to collaborate in really meaningful ways. I'm seeing more of that, I think, especially when it comes to textile innovation. So, for example, there's so much innovation around bio-based materials and some of that comes from food waste. So there's a lot of innovation using A lot of the, for example, it could be orange peels or it could be pineapple crowns, like things that you would throw away that wouldn't normally be consumed that are being turned into sustainable bio-based materials, utilizing food waste and turning it into an innovative textile. So that's like one specific example that I'm seeing that has, you know, really been spreading across the industry where food and fashion are coming together both in the name of sustainability and reducing waste for each other's industries. It also kind of makes me think of industrial symbiosis, which is, you know, where you can have various companies and industries interacting with each other, mitigating waste, reusing certain materials from different processes and turning them into something new. So that's like one example of circularity between two industries that I think is really cool. And innovation also doesn't have to mean inventing something completely new. It can also be looking back to traditional ecological knowledge and traditional textile practices and incorporating that into the innovation and preserving it and bringing it forward into a new way, even combining it with clean technology. There's so many ways that you can approach bringing sustainability forward for both industries.

Thank you. And if I may, I can give you some highlights on GFA and the work that I do because you just mentioned about the cross collaboration on this system. I don't know how many of you knows Global Fashion Agenda. We are setting an agenda for the entire industry and the entire value chain. to transform and become sustainable. We have a mission to accelerate this transformation and we work work with all brands, manufacturers, policymakers, and academia, consultancy that measure progress to really mobilize the industry we convene. And I'm very glad to see another convening moment because we believe that in education, number one, and so the education can increase the level of sustainability also with the learnings that they can have in creating something new. So innovation is one of the key elements, but of course there is so much policy that has to come on the way. The two main elements for also the fashion to thrive is to reduce overconsumption and overproduction. And so all the activities on the circularity are also gathered to do so. But as Maya was saying, the fashion industry is very much connected to the food industry, to the agriculture. Not only agriculture, there is also transportation, energy, and so on. But a lot of our materials, the ones that are not invented yet, so we not from agriculture, come from the soil. So it's important that there is this big connection. And that's why I'm very glad to see this panel and to be with you and speaking both on the health, because also the women, 75% of the million workers in this supply chain are women. So going back to you, we need to also change the behavior of consumers. That is important to reduce this overconsumption, as we say. And you spend your career in translating complex health and nutrition research into information that people can actually use in their everyday lives. What have you learned about the gap between knowing what is good for us and actually changing our behavior?

I think the biggest thing I've learned is that information alone rarely changes behavior. And it would be very silly of us to assume that because, you know, a few of us put up our cards with saying that we've been, you know, we've got healthy lifestyles, we choose healthy foods. maybe all of us would do that if we had the right environment. So if we weren't traveling, we weren't busy, we had access to it. So we have to consider cost, access, availability, culture, time, all of those factors. And I think it's important to educate and inform people on an individual level, but I really think that it has to come from top down so that we have policies in place, businesses are protecting people and putting the healthiest, most sustainable choice as the easiest choice. Right now, it's the opposite. The least healthy choice is what you see when you go into a supermarket and it's on offer available to you. So we need to turn that on its head, I think.

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more because as I was saying, we educate also, but without the policy, without the business trying to do the right thing. But there is hope and we will talk about that. So to both of you, I would like to ask that we often put the responsibility of sustainability to the individuals, but our choice are shaped by this system. So what would you like to see change at the business and institutional levels, if you could choose?

I feel like what I would really love to see change is really I think we even need to redefine what sustainable is and what sustainability looks like. I think that oftentimes, sometimes sustainability is kind of shaped as being something or another, and it's much more diverse than that. It's really based off of accessibility, it's really based off of culture, and it's really based off of some of the practices that are kind of preexisting around you that can be leaned into. And so I think that one of the biggest things is, one, we need these industries, whether it's fashion, whether it's agri-food space, to really be intentional about creating more accessibility to healthy choices, to more sustainable choices. We are currently in a system that doesn't offer as many healthy or sustainable choices and options to the average person. And that's something I would really love to see change. And I would also love to see more innovation around cultural sustainability as well, and all the different ways that people's background and people's practices can also be recognized as sustainable practices that maybe are not as commonly or often seen.

Yeah, I would echo what Maya said. When we think about human health, it very much overlaps with planetary health, and that goes for food. So our food choices, if we are choosing food that is sustainable, it's sustainable for the planet. And so encouraging people to eat in that way, but also having businesses, companies, institutions making those options available, eating in season, eating a largely plant-focused diet, reducing food waste, all of those things. But I think for a lot of companies, they're not going to voluntarily do that unless there is a policy in place or they're incentivized. So it really requires everyone working together to make it happen if we want that big global impact, which we want and we also need.

I'm very hopeful for that, but I would like to ask both of you, what really gives you hope when it's creating healthier and more sustainable way of living?

If I may answer from a women's health perspective, because I think we make up half the planet and we can't talk about sustainable health if we're not considering women. But where I am hopeful is a couple of years ago, having these conversations was difficult. Some topics were taboo, be that in menstrual health, menopause, pregnancy, postpartum. Now we're having these conversations and in really important places. So it's giving me hope that things are moving forward. We have a long way to go, but I think it's a big start and I'm excited to see what the next 10 years show for it.

I would say what gives me hope is I've, well, first of all, being on this panel with you two amazing women and being able to be in a room with the folks who are doing the incredible work on the ground in both of these spaces and the fact that we're coming together to have a very interdisciplinary conversation, that is one thing that gives me hope. I feel like I wouldn't have seen something like that years ago when I first started. I think that it's really hopeful also that even though we are dealing with so many global challenges and a poly crisis of sorts, especially when you look at climate, I think even though we're dealing with something that if we're talking about anthropocentric climate change or anthropogenic climate change, Even though we're dealing with something that touches so many different areas, including all of the industries that we work in, and it's something we haven't really faced before, we're also at a point in history where we've never had so many incredible people working together from various disciplines, from various backgrounds around the world, with so much incredible lived experience, solutions, technologies, traditional ecological knowledge that are coming together, that are really doing some incredible work, problem solving, and there's so many wins that are happening that I don't think, seen or celebrated as much. And there's also so much amazing youth leadership and intergenerational leadership. So I feel like the movement for a sustainable and more healthy world is stronger than it ever has been. And that's what really gives me hope.

Fully agree with you both. The new generation is finally having much more sustainability and a different approach when it comes to both health and fashion. And so with that, I would like to close the panel and with this note on hope. we will bring hopefully a systemic change both in in both of those those word and thank you very much Maya and Enzo for that and before you go I would like that we take a look of the UN fashion and lifestyle Network video that we're going to play and thank you very much for the network for hosting this wonderful planet panel and for you audience to listen thank you

that when it protects the environment and protects people, then you can really say that culture is regenerative.

Everybody can be an agent of change. Everybody can contribute, and there is no action too small. Let's build a better planet together.