World Nutrition Volume 7, Number 1-3, January-March 2016 WN Feedback W orld Nutrition Volume 7, Number 1-3, January-March 2016 Journal of the World Public Health Nutrition Association Published at www.wphna.org/worldnutrition/ Principles. Concepts. Language Aspiration is one more A José Luis Vivero Pol Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium Email: Jose-luis.viveropol@ uclouvain.be Access José Luis’s profile here: Access April 2015 José Luis V ivero Pol on Food is a public good here: http://wphna.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/03/WN-2015-06-04-306-309-Jose-Luis-Vivero-Pol-Commons.pdf Access Jose Luis V ivero Pol´s Vision for this century here: http://wphna.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/11/W N-2015-06-11-12-787-791-V isions-Jose-Luis-V iveroPol.pdf Last month’s WN editorial nicely and literarily portrayed what type of attitude public health workers and anti-hunger professionals should adopt in regard to food, hunger, malnutrition, the corporatisation of public nutrition and the commodification of food. We need to be activists against hunger, as academics, officials, journalists or entrepreneurs. We cannot remain neutral or detached. The editorial, on attitude, saw the need to ally, advocate, activate and agitate. I would like to stress another A-ttitude urgently required in our rather pragmatic and bureaucratic nutritional setting: the need to aspire. We will not get rid of hunger solely producing science, developing technology, amplifying our outreach, advocating for better policies, activating our peers, and agitating minds and souls with ideas beyond those that are established. This is because we don’t know how a hunger-free world looks like. Such a state has never existed and hence we have to imagine it. We need to dare to imagine a world with no hunger and malnutrition. This could be one in which different types of public policies distribute sustainably-produced food or create [Feedback] World Nutrition January-March 2016, 7, 1-3, 125-126 World Nutrition Volume 7, Number 1-3, January-March 2016 universal food schemes whereby everybody gets free food simply because it is a vital resource, just as the Irish now get free water in their homes, the Spaniards now get free health services, and the Belgians get free education, financed from general taxation. Possible Utopias This year is the 500th anniversary of the first edition of Thomas More’s Utopia, published in 1516 in Louvain where I work now. Let’s apply ‘possible Utopias’ as envisioned by Erik Olin Wright of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to nutrition. After all, so many political and institutional developments were at their beginnings ‘utopias’ until they materialised. For example, voting rights for women were dismissed as impossibly utopian up to the end of the 19th century but then they were achieved in many countries in the first half of the 20th century. The abolition of slavery was never considered a possibility during the 16th century debates in Spain on whether Latin American Indians had souls or not. During the French Revolution, the goals of equal rights for men and women, the setting aside of unreasonable Church influence in favour of secular governance and human fraternity were some of the aspirations that mobilised the common people to rally against the old regime and to strive to build a new order. Aspiring to end hunger Here is an aspirational dream I was part of. In 2005, with José Graziano da Silva, current UN FAO director-general and then Brazilian president Lula’s special advisor on food security, and Andres Botran, formerly Guatemala’s state secretary on food Security, we launched an aspirational and decidedly utopian initiative to have the whole Latin America and the Caribbean region with no hunger by 2025. Initially, it was just a dream. The three of us worked with no funds, a few contacts, and a committed attitude. We amplified our message through the presidents of Brazil and Guatemala. We advocated within FAO for which I then worked, and donors to get additional support, we activated colleagues from other Latin American countries, and we indeed agitated in several ministerial meetings and presidential summits by introducing sentences in their final statements defending the goal of having a HungerFree Latin America and Caribbean in 20 years. We finally succeeded in inserting the zero hunger goal in the regional political declarations and to export that Zero Hunger Challenge to the UN and, through the Sustainable Development Goals, to the rest of the world. José Graziano did a terrific job in convincing UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon to endorse this aspirational yet possible utopia. Nowadays, from Guatemala to New York, there is now a road towards a future without hunger, guiding global food and nutrition policies. We professionals should unleash our imaginations, and envision a more sustainable and fairer food system for all, based on the universal right to food, the consideration of [Feedback] World Nutrition January-March 2016, 7, 1-3, 125-126 World Nutrition Volume 7, Number 1-3, January-March 2016 food as a commons and current capabilities and knowledge to produce enough food to feed us all well. We should use the concept of aspiration more often, especially in political discourse. Our leaders need to be more inspirational to mobilise the people, and World Nutrition needs to be more aspirational to gather together a critical mass of professionals capable of setting aside the current broken food system in favour of a whole new one. Let’s come together and envision a world with no hunger before 2030. Let’s be sure that dreams can one day become true. Vivero Pol JL. Aspiration is one more A. [Principles. Concepts. Language]. [Feedback]. World Nutrition January-March 2016, 7, 1-3, 125-126 [Feedback] World Nutrition January-March 2016, 7, 1-3, 125-126