Elucidating the capabilities of international mechanisms to foster procedural just system change – The case of the 2021 UN Food System Summit

• International summits with limited capabilities to ensure procedural justice. • Summit procedure supports local knowledge mobilisation. • Summit procedure limits information disclosure and institutional representation. • Summit procedure favour extractive narratives over regenerative narratives. • Interviews with high level representatives and interest groups from the summit. The high ambition of the UN Food Systems Summit (FSS) 2021 was to create system change towards sustainable food systems in a participatory and just way. The new holistic perspective of food systems opened a new arena in which narratives competed for attention. This made the FSS an opportunity to develop and discuss alternative transition pathways, brought forward by less powerful voices. However, profound and sustained critique accompanied the Summit and draws a rather dejected picture of its achievements. By analysing how the procedural justice of the FSS is assessed by actor groups proposing different narratives of sustainable food systems, we examine the opportunities and limits of a global governing body like the UN/FAO to foster system change in a procedurally just way.