Fixing Food 2018: Best Practices towards the Sustainable Development Goals
Publication year
Resource type
UNCCD Library
Material Type
ebook
The publication investigates best practices in food sustainability across the world. It uses the three pillars—sustainable agriculture, nutritional challenges, and food loss and waste—of the Food Sustainability Index (FSI), developed by The Economist Intelligence Unit with the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition, as a framework. Now in its third iteration, the FSI has been extended to 67 countries in 2018 (up from 34 in the 2017 edition).
In October 2018 a new report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued alarming news: the world will feel the effects of climate change far sooner than was once thought, and in order to limit global warming and avoid its negative effects, there is a need for “rapid far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”. With estimates that agricultural activities account for up to 30% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the actions needed include addressing the sustainability of the global food system. As this report shows, most agree that this must be done while feeding an increasingly hungry world.
When thinking about the global food system it is hard to overestimate one thing: food’s complexity. Food is a fundamental need and a right. It is also a commodity, a product, a meal, a source of nutrition—and it is fundamentally linked to questions of culture, heritage, identity and integration. The ability of people to feed themselves with dignity is a long-standing international human right to which many countries are committed.
At every stage along the food value chain, farmers, manufacturers, buyers, packagers, distributors, regulators and consumers play a role in shaping its safety and quality, its environmental footprint and its ability to feed the world healthily and sustainably. Similarly, best practice in food sustainability encompasses many activities, from water conservation to maintaining soil health, the promotion of biodiversity and better yields and incomes for smallholder farmers, and improving nutrition through school feed programmes or the establishment of urban food policy councils.
In October 2018 a new report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued alarming news: the world will feel the effects of climate change far sooner than was once thought, and in order to limit global warming and avoid its negative effects, there is a need for “rapid far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”. With estimates that agricultural activities account for up to 30% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the actions needed include addressing the sustainability of the global food system. As this report shows, most agree that this must be done while feeding an increasingly hungry world.
When thinking about the global food system it is hard to overestimate one thing: food’s complexity. Food is a fundamental need and a right. It is also a commodity, a product, a meal, a source of nutrition—and it is fundamentally linked to questions of culture, heritage, identity and integration. The ability of people to feed themselves with dignity is a long-standing international human right to which many countries are committed.
At every stage along the food value chain, farmers, manufacturers, buyers, packagers, distributors, regulators and consumers play a role in shaping its safety and quality, its environmental footprint and its ability to feed the world healthily and sustainably. Similarly, best practice in food sustainability encompasses many activities, from water conservation to maintaining soil health, the promotion of biodiversity and better yields and incomes for smallholder farmers, and improving nutrition through school feed programmes or the establishment of urban food policy councils.
Keywords
economic costs
food systems
global warming
food and nutrition
sustainable agriculture
best practices
food waste