III WORLD SUMMIT OF REGIONS ON FOOD SECURITY AND SOVEREIGNTY CUENCA, APRIL 26-28, 2018 Poverty, inequality, climate change, all hunger causes, are interrelated issues representing great challenges for humanity. Despite the improvements registered in recent years, food security and sovereignty remain pending rights for millions of human beings in the world. Regions and their governments, as well as civil society and the private sector have a responsibility and a role to play addressing these challenges. Giving continuity to the Summit of Dakar (2010) and Medellin (2012), in which the role of regional actors and territorial food systems were promoted, regional governments have fostered spaces of reflection, debate and intervention with a wide participation of representatives of national and subnational governments, international community and civil society in the III World Summit of Regions on Food Security and Sovereignty in Cuenca, Ecuador from April 26th to 28th, 2018. After intensive days of reflection, dialogue, and knowledge sharing in this Summit regarding agri-food systems and the role of regional governments to contribute achieving the goal of Sustainable Development of Zero Hunger, the participants declare: 1. To highlight the efforts of international community regarding the right to food in terms of security and sovereignty, as well as the scale of the challenge to eradicate poverty and hunger by 2030, which are not compatible with the current models of production, transformation, and consumption. 2. To consider all people as subjects of rights to an adequate nutrition, which must be guaranteed by the States, without any territorial, ethnic, age or gender exclusions, through differentiated policies and programs to overcome these inequalities. 3. To understand that hunger, poverty and inequality are structural and closely related phenomena, that must be addressed and resolved comprehensively through a jointly responsible dialogue and actions that involve all territorial actors. 4. To demand from national and local governments the implementation of measures that guarantee the eradication of violence, and the promotion of an equal social status of women, especially of peasant, indigenous and rural women, as well as economic autonomy, access to land, health, education that contributes to equitable development for food security and sovereignty. 5. To recognize that inequality gaps between territories and access to resources, aggravate the problems of poverty, hunger and malnutrition, so comprehensive interventions are required, suitable to the environmental, social, cultural and economic conditions of each territory. 6. To express concern about the double burden of malnutrition evolution, chronic undernourishment and the growing tendency to overweight and obesity, both related to health issues, which cause the death of millions of human beings, especially in the poorest regions of the world.

7. To raise awareness of food insecurity situations of people living in conflict zones or displaced by any humanitarian crisis, making a call for international solidarity to address their needs and promote peace. 8. To demand effective actions to reduce the loss of food throughout the production and consumption chain, with the establishment of food banks, short chains and promotion of good agricultural and industrial practices, production of alternative energy or responsible consumption. 9. To ratify the need to promote sustainable agri-food systems by fostering agroecological practices that respect the limits of nature in the recovery of its resources, stimulating the participation of young people as essential actors for the new rurality. 10. To emphasize the importance of family agriculture, associativity and cooperation for food security and sovereignty, the protection of the environment, biodiversity and cultural diversity, as well as the generation of jobs and incomes and their contribution to the wealth of nations, and to emphasize the need to design and implement differentiated and comprehensive policies for its promotion and protection. 11. To promote the conscious consumption of food, sustainable diets, healthier life habits and a food culture that encourage the proper use and diversification of regional agro-food heritage, with territorial identity, giving adequate information and voice to citizens regarding the quality of food. 12. To emphasize the importance of the territories in the creation of solutions to the problems of food insecurity, malnutrition and poverty, which contribute to the formation of a global knowledge from the territorial level, understood as a system of urban-rural links, of human settlements and nature. 13. To encourage regional and national governments to promote programs that provide trading, water, irrigation and sanitation infrastructure to the territories; food assistance to vulnerable populations in emergencies; direct public purchases of food from farmers' organizations; and policies of access of small producers to land, water, seeds, technologies, financing, infrastructure and to markets with inclusive relationships. 14. To strengthen the role of regions in the generation of information, applied innovation, inclusive schemes of trading and transformation, rural income diversification, and strategies that allow the elimination of gaps between rural and urban sectors, with a logic of comprehensive territorial development. 15. To generate actions to protect the ecosystems and ensure the diversity of flora and fauna, the conservation of water sources and face the impacts of climate change in the food production, by implementing mitigation and adaptation measures and strengthening the resilience capacity in the territories. 16. To commit the regions to create spaces of participatory governance on food security and sovereignty, involving all territorial actors of agrifood systems in a broader and inclusive manner, in order to promote joint policies in all governmental levels. 17. To promote the exchange of concepts and practices of public policies, apprenticeship and capacities

development about initiatives in favor of food security and sovereignty establishing alliances with the academic community, research centers, international organizations, cooperation agencies and NGOs, to facilitate the knowledge management in the subject. 18. To express the understanding that food security and sovereignty challenges require global and multidimensional efforts, alongside international cooperation, and the establishment of public, private, and civil society alliances; with a synergistic coordination between national, regional and local governments, from a territorial approach. 19. To ratify the commitment and efforts of the regions to fulfill the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, especially those objectives and goals related to the eradication of poverty and hunger. 20. To create an international platform of horizontal and decentralized cooperation, where food security and sovereignty initiatives of the world’s regions get articulated between regional representatives and the United Nations system. This platform will elaborate a plan of action based on the guidelines of the III World Summit of Regions on Food Security and Sovereignty "Zero Hunger”. 21. To deliver this Declaration to the United Nations system, so that the actions proposed before get included in the Food Security and Sovereignty agenda, and get implemented through policies, actions, programs and concrete projects for the benefit of territorial development. Finally, we express our thanks for the preparation of the event and its hospitality to the Provincial Government of Azuay, the Consortium of Decentralized Autonomous Provincial Governments of Ecuador (CONGOPE), the Organizations of the United Regions (ORU FOGAR), and the platform of organizations that contributed to the realization of the III World Summit of Regions on Food Security and Sovereignty “Zero Hunger”. Cuenca, April 28, 2018

Paúl Carrasco Carpio PREFECTURE DEL AZUAY

Gustavo Baroja Narváez PRESIDENT OF THE CONGOPE

Abdessamad Sekkal PRESIDENT ORU FOGAR