Achieving the sustainable development goals through sustainable food systems
Year: 2019
Type: book
Abstract: This is the pre-print version of the book "Achieving the sustainable development goals through sustainable food systems" published as final paper in Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals Through Sustainable Food Systems10 October 2019, Pages 1-262 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23969-5 Preface The food system is becoming a central nexus with our future, encompassing a broad range of societal challenges, from food security, nutrition, and social and economic inequalities to climate change, biodiversity, and land and ocean ecosystem services. In order to guarantee the future of human kind, food systems have to meet the needs of a growing and increasingly urbanized population while avoiding harm on the environment. At present, food production is falling short of meeting nutritional requirements and guaranteeing long-term health for almost one third of people worldwide. Agriculture and food production account for a very substantial share of climate-altering emissions and are intensely consuming water and land. The 17 SDGs of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDGs) adopted by the world leaders in September 2015 at the UN Sustainable Development Summit have food at their very core. This is a first major argument made in this book aimed to reach researchers, policy-makers, businessmen, and practitioners in all sectors crosscut by food. The SDGs provide a framework to mobilize efforts toward sustainable development, reducing poverty and inequalities, fostering economic growth, and at the same time addressing climate change issues and environmental conservation. This implies urgent and far-reaching changes in the way we produce and consume food. The COP21, held in Paris in 2015, became the first conference to establish a concrete, long-term plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to involve not only the most advanced countries but also the developing countries. For the first time in 20 years of negotiations in the United Nations, a legally binding, universal agreement on the climate was signed, with the ambitious goal of keeping global warming below 2°C and, in longer term, below 1.5°. The IPCC report released in October 2018 clearly showed that we need to stay well below 1.5°C for dramatic impacts on ecosystems, health, and economic growth associated with this rise in temperature to be avoided. The SDGs and the Paris Agreement call for responsibility by all the actors in the food system, from farm to fork. The construction of sustainable food systems requires the prompt engagement of all stakeholders: from the citizens, called upon to choose a healthy and sustainable diet, to the farmers, who can combine ancient traditions and technological innovation to reduce the impact of agriculture; from the private sector, to invest in the development of a truly sustainable food offers, to scientists, called to fill in data gaps, to institutions and policy-makers, who can place the protection of natural resources and environment at the top of their agenda, also through incentives. Public-private partnerships become capitalize on the relative strengths and address the sustainability issue, which can be achieved through cooperation. We can see a number of initiatives and project that have the potential to put forward the transformation of food systems. For example, a growing number of national food-based dietary guidelines are advocating environmentally friendly diets. The Netherlands recommends limiting the servings of meat to twice per week, the United States includes a vegetarian diet as one of their three recommended dietary patterns, while China advocates cutting meat consumption by 50%. Canada has released the most updated food guide in 2019, underlining that food choices can have an impact on the environment and recommending choosing protein foods that come from plants more often. Cities are taking the lead in catalyzing climate action, as the experience of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, gathering 199 cities over the world to mobilize change in urban food systems. The engagement of individuals is fundamental to achieve this kind of change. This happens only if the individual citizen internalizes what a sustainable food system can look like. Education thus is fundamental in building “sustainability literacy” defined as the knowledge, skills, and mind-sets that allow individuals to become deeply committed in building a sustainable future and assisting in making informed and effective decisions to this end. This education has to put forward a new mind-set, from linear to circular. The book makes the effort of compassing the immensity of challenges and changes that the global food system of the twenty-first century will have to undergo, going from the involvement of youth to the role of artificial intelligence and from climate change mitigation and agroecology to the role of advocacy and activism, investments, and migration policies. We do not have the pretension of exhaustive- ness, but we can argue that there is enough data today to compel us to take action. The book is divided in two parts: the first summarizes the key issues regarding food systems; the second identifies a new collaborative approach for solutions that can re-establish the balance between human health and the planet. Sustainability, especially when it concerns food, is trans-disciplinary. It intersects disciplines such as ecology, geography, nutrition, medicine, economics, philosophy, and behavioral sciences, and this book is the result of the different perspectives over the issues faced by the food system in the hope to inspire new visions to progress in a sustain- able development pathway.
Institution: Università degli Studi della Tuscia
Language: English
Subfield: Ecology
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
SDGs: Climate action, Zero hunger
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4288093804