ECOSOC Partnership Forum 2026: A Donor Platform Co-Organized Side Event

Strategic Investments for Resilient Agrifood Systems: Driving SDG Progress through Partnerships

Resilience in agrifood systems is an urgent challenge, yet effective investment pathways remain elusive.

Extreme heat, climate volatility, and mounting pressures on water, energy, and infrastructure are already threatening livelihoods at scale, while fragmented investment approaches continue to limit impact. The question is no longer whether transformation is needed, but how it can be delivered — coherently, at scale, and across sectors.

Join this official off-site side event of the 2026 ECOSOC Partnership Forum, which builds on the applied work and shared experience of institutions actively grappling with this question in practice.

Through a multi-sectoral lens, the event will explore how strategic agrifood investments can accelerate progress on the SDGs 6, 7, 9, 11 and 17, as well as showcase how multi-partner platforms can sequence and align financing to better leverage increasingly scarce resources. The event will demystify the roles of each sector - public, private, and multilateral actors - in financing agrifood systems through a coordinated and field-tested process.

This session builds on ongoing work by the co-organizers:

• Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI)
• Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
• International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)
• Global Donor Platform for Rural Development (GDPRD)
• Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)
• World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

A follow-up partnership guide will be developed, synthesizing recommendations for integrated SDG action.

The 2026 ECOSOC Partnership Forum will take place on 27 January 2026 at the UN Headquarters in New York under the theme “Transformative, equitable, innovative and coordinated actions for the 2030 Agenda and its SDGs for a sustainable future for all”. The Forum will place a special emphasis on the Sustainable Development Goals under in-depth review at the 2026 high-level political forum on sustainable development (HLPF), namely Goal 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation), Goal 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), Goal 9 (Industry Innovation and Infrastructure), Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), and Goal 17 (Partnerships for the Goals).