We are pleased to share the first FOODGaP Chronicles, capturing key insights from the initial online workshop of the FOODGaP Capacity Building Programme, held on January 14, 2026.
We are pleased to share the first FOODGaP Chronicles, capturing key insights from the initial online workshop of the FOODGaP Capacity Building Programme, held on January 14, 2026.
The workshop explored how monitoring can move beyond accountability and compliance, becoming a forward-looking tool that strengthens governance capacity, policy coherence, and institutional learning. Rather than producing more indicators, monitoring for action focuses on clarifying priorities, supporting strategic choices, and enabling cities to act under conditions of uncertainty.
Across cities and metropolitan areas, participants reflected on how evidence becomes actionable only when it is embedded in governance frameworks and decision-making processes. When disconnected from policy coherence and institutional mandates, monitoring risks remains a purely technical exercise.
Key insights from the workshop include:
What we explored:
• Monitoring as a learning and anticipatory infrastructure, not a retrospective control tool.
• The role of policy coherence (vertical, horizontal, and operational) in making evidence usable.
• How participation strengthens governance when it is structured and context-sensitive.
• Why evidence-based food policies depend more on institutional capacity than on the quantity of data available.
City cases discussed:
• Dublin City Council, where food policy is embedded in the statutory Climate Action Plan 2024–2029, illustrating strong vertical policy coherence and learning-oriented monitoring.
• Barcelona Metropolitan Area, highlighting the value of horizontal coherence through the Metropolitan Strategic Plan and the Metropolitan Food System Observatory as a planning and decision-support tool.
• Mersin Metropolitan Municipality, where strong field-based action precedes formal monitoring, showing how learning and evidence can emerge directly from implementation.
Together, these cases demonstrate that there is no single model for evidence-informed food policies. What matters is the alignment between governance scale, policy architecture and the capacity to learn over time.
Cross-cutting reflections from EPLO and academic contributors stressed that monitoring frameworks are never neutral: they reflect values, priorities and assumptions about what counts as relevant and actionable. Strengthening food system governance, therefore, requires better coordination across levels of government and a clearer link between evidence, participation and decision-making.
Conclusion:
Monitoring for action is not a technical upgrade, but a question of institutional design. Data alone do not drive change — institutions do, when they can learn, anticipate and make choices visible.
This Chronicle is part of the FOODGaP Capacity Building Programme, funded by the European Union under the Interreg NEXT MED Programme.
Last Update
03/02/2026
Next Med