Policies and Design Processes to Enable Transformation (original) (raw)
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Enacting theories of change for food systems transformation under climate change
Global Food Security, 2021
In the past few years, we have seen growing calls for a transformation in global food systems in response to multiple challenges, including climate change. Food systems are responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions from human activity and agricultural yields are at risk due to climate change impacts. Although many proposals have been made, there are fewer insights on what these imply for knowledge and innovation systems. We seek to advance the literature on transforming food systems under a changing climate, by identifying concrete next steps for scientists and practitioners. We do this by adapting a theory of change proposed by Campbell et al. (2018). We used the adapted theory of change to design the 5th Global Science Conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture, which brought together different stakeholders within global food systems. Through conference sessions and a survey with 262 of the participants, we validate elements of the Campbell et al. framework, identify additional elements, and offer further nuance. The findings point at nine priority areas for a transformation in food systems under climate change: (1) Empowering farmer and consumer organizations, women and youth; (2) Digitally enabled climate-informed services; (3) Climate-resilient and low-emission practices and technologies; (4) Innovative finance to leverage public and private sector investments; (5) Reshaping supply chains, food retail, marketing and procurement; (6) Fostering enabling policies and institutions; (7) Knowledge transfer; (8) Addressing fragmentation in the knowledge and innovation systems; (9) Ensuring food security. We have identified three types of scholarly insights from innovation, transition and sustainability transformations studies that may inform the next steps: these relate to stimulating novelty across the priority areas, ensuring participation in knowledge production, and reconfiguring incumbent systems to enable implementation of the theory of change.
Food systems for sustainable development: proposals for a profound four-part transformation
Agronomy for Sustainable Development
Evidence shows the importance of food systems for sustainable development: they are at the nexus that links food security, nutrition, and human health, the viability of ecosystems, climate change, and social justice. However, agricultural policies tend to focus on food supply, and sometimes, on mechanisms to address negative externalities. We propose an alternative. Our starting point is that agriculture and food systems' policies should be aligned to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This calls for deep changes in comparison with the paradigms that prevailed when steering the agricultural change in the XXth century. We identify the comprehensive food systems transformation that is needed. It has four parts: first, food systems should enable all people to benefit from nutritious and healthy food. Second, they should reflect sustainable agricultural production and food value chains. Third, they should mitigate climate change and build resilience. Fourth, they should encourage a renaissance of rural territories. The implementation of the transformation relies on (i) suitable metrics to aid decision-making, (ii) synergy of policies through convergence of local and global priorities, and (iii) enhancement of development approaches that focus on territories. We build on the work of the "Milano Group," an informal group of experts convened by the UN Secretary General in Milan in 2015. Backed by a literature review, what emerges is a strategic narrative linking climate, agriculture and food, and calling for a deep transformation of food systems at scale. This is critical for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. The narrative highlights the needed consistency between global actions for sustainable development and numerous local-level innovations. It emphasizes the challenge of designing differentiated paths for food systems transformation responding to local and national expectations. Scientific and operational challenges are associated with the alignment and arbitration of local action within the context of global priorities.
Connecting the dots: Integrating food policies towards food system transformation
Environmental Science and Policy, 2024
Growing evidence shows that current policies are unable to catalyse the necessary transformation towards a more just and sustainable food system. Scholars argue that food policy integrationpolicies that unite numerous foodrelated actionsis required to overcome dominant siloed and fragmented approaches and to tackle environmental and economic crises. However, what is being integrated and how such integrations contribute to food system transformation remain unexplored. This paper aims to disentangle frames and approaches to food policy integration through a critical analysis of literature on integrated policies and food system transformation. Complemented by a systematic literature review for "food system" and "polic* integrat*", overlapping approaches and gaps between these literatures are revealed over the last twenty years. We use the prisms of processes ("how" food policy integration is being practiced), placement ("where" crossovers between sectors in governance institutions and where synergies between objectives can be created) and things ("what" specific aspects of the food system and related sectors exist within integrated policies and leverage points to trigger transformative dynamics) to explore how policy integration and food system transformation intersect within current debates. Our findings reveal cross-cutting themes and distinct theoretical frameworks but also identify substantial gaps, where frames of food policy integration often remain within their disciplinary silos, are ambiguous or ill-defined. We conclude that to achieve policy integration as a tool for food system transformation, a new research and policy agenda is needed that builds on diverse knowledges, critical policy approaches and the integration of food with other sectors.
Climate change and the urgency to transform food systems
Science
Without rapid changes to agriculture and food systems, the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change will not be met. Food systems are one of the most important contributors to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but they also need to be adapted to cope with climate change impacts. Although many options exist to reduce GHG emissions in the food system, efforts to develop implementable transformation pathways are hampered by a combination of structural challenges such as fragmented decision-making, vested interests, and power imbalances in the climate policy and food communities, all of which are compounded by a lack of joint vision. New processes and governance arrangements are urgently needed for dealing with potential trade-offs among mitigation options and their food security implications.
Working across Scales and Actors for Transforming Food Systems
Cambridge University Press eBooks, 2023
pramod aggarwal, ashesh ambasta, andrea castellanos, sridhar gummadi, simone højte, deissy martínez-baró n, caroline mwongera, mathieu oué draogo, maren radeny, tone rusdal, bjoern ole sander, leocadio sebastian, and reiner wassmann Highlights • Although complex, working across scales and actors is critical for foodsystem transformation. • In most cases, working at the local scale, that is, with farms and districts, is the most important, as this is where action is required. • Through effective cross-scale work, lessons from local levels can shape the thinking of regional and national governments, as well as the private sector. • Involving multiple and ideally nested scales, designing sets of solutions, and developing actionable, fundable, and implementable solutions is likely to provide rich food-system outcomes. • Partners need to provide the tools, signals, and resources so that local people, communities, and policy planners are empowered to drive transformation.
Transforming Food Systems: The Potential of Engaged Political Economy
IDS Bulletin, 2019
A food systems approach is critical to understanding and facilitating food system transformation, yet gaps in analysis are impeding changes towards greater equity, sustainability, and emancipation. Gaps include analyses of interdependencies among food system activities, of narrative politics, and of the behaviour of food system components using dynamic methodologies. Other problems include inappropriate boundaries to the system, insufficient learning across scales, lack of integration of social and ecological drivers and trends, and inadequate attention to the intersectional impacts of marginalisation. Both interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work is necessary to overcome these problems, and, fundamentally, to understand power in food systems. Transdisciplinarity allows an engaged political economy in which social actors, including those who have not benefited from adequate food, livelihoods, and other services that food systems provide, are involved along with academics in co-creating the knowledge necessary for transformation. This engagement requires humility and respect, especially by academics, and explicit power-sharing.
2021
At the moment, many toolboxes for stakeholder engagement exist. This document describes approaches, methods and techniques that can be applied when involving stakeholders in the process of developing transition pathways to a sustainable food system. T r a n s i t io n Pa th w a y s Tools Approaches Methods Colophon Intro Principles of Responsible Transitions 'transition pathway' can be used retrospectively to describe past transitions, as well as prospectively to assess possible future transitions. Transition pathways come in many forms [1] and can be used either to envision system change or to reflect on it. Who is this brochure intended for? The brochure is intended for members of teams of researchers, consultants or experts that support practical, innovative projects to make the food system more sustainable. Principles of Responsible Transitions References Introduction Principles for defining responsible transition pathways Inclusiveness and dialogue: working on transition pathways should be inclusive and reflective, and must promote dialogue To solve problems in the food system and reveal new opportunities, it is important that all relevant stakeholders be involved. The principle of inclusiveness applies here. Inclusiveness implies not only directly involved individuals, but also those indirectly involved people who may have to deal with the impact of changes in the food system. However, the involvement of stakeholders alone is not enough to ensure development of responsible transition pathways. The approaches, methods and tools should also contribute to a dialogue in which all stakeholders are taken seriously, can provide their own input and can exert influence. Integrality: working on transition pathways must foster coherence In many projects the focus lies on value chains, but a chain approach is not suitable for the food system, whose greater complexity calls for a system approach. In the system approach, the methods and tools should be chosen that are applicable to multiple actors, multiple scales and multiple places. The presence of multiple actors implies that not only food producers, retailers or consumers are involved, but environmental organisations or cultural organisations as well. The need for multiple scales signifies that the methods should connect problems and solutions on a local scale with requirements from and impacts on the surrounding regional scale, while the regional scale is connected with the national scale, and so forth. The term 'multiple places' is related to multiple scales but focusses on the tradeoffs from one place to another. For instance, a solution for waste in Europe can cause major environmental problems in a third world country where the waste is processed. Contextuality: working on transition pathways should take cultural context into account Not all methods or tools work well in multiple cultural contexts. A method that works very well in the Netherlands will not necessarily work in a country that is part of the same food system but is located elsewhere in the world. This is especially important for methods and tools for the engagement of stakeholders. Methods of communication can differ greatly between countries, as can the hierarchical relationships or the stakeholders' access to the project. Methods should therefore take the cultural context into account. References Introduction Principles of Responsible Transitions Long-term orientation: working on transition pathways should anticipate the long term An important characteristic of transitions is that they last for decades. Transitions such as the introduction of mobile phones went quite rapidly (one decade), while other transitions go much more slowly, such as the introduction of electric cars. Engagement methods and tools need to adhere to either the aspect of time or the aspect of timing. The first aspect, time, relates to the period that a tool is aimed at. When stakeholders are involved in planning, tools should help them to consider the long term. The second aspect, timing, relates to the different phases through which transitions proceed, defined in transition theory as follows: pro-development, takeoff, breakthrough and stabilisation [2]. Each stage requires its own way of working and its own methods and tools. Tangible actions: working on transition pathways should facilitate concrete actions for change Methods and tools should be aimed at supporting or facilitating change by means of concrete actions. The envisioning of transition pathways requires an understanding of future situations and of the kind of system change which could lead to such situations. Also, the use of stakeholder engagement tools requires a concept of the stakeholders' role in the transition process. What concrete change do the stakeholders want to achieve? And how can this tool or activity contribute to concrete actions to achieve change? Tools should help stakeholders to understand how they can contribute to the desired transition.
Sustainably achieving the goal of global food security is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. The current food system is failing to meet the needs of people, and at the same time, is having far-reaching impacts on the environment and undermining human well-being in other important ways. It is increasingly apparent that a deep transformation in the way we produce and consume food is needed in order to ensure a more just and sustainable future. This paper uses the concept of regime shifts to understand key drivers and innovations underlying past disruptions in the food system and to explore how they may help us think about desirable future changes and how we might leverage them. We combine two perspectives on regime shifts-one derived from natural sciences and the other from social sciences-to propose an interpretation of food regimes that draws on innovation theory. We use this conceptualization to discuss three examples of innovations that we argue helped enable critical regime shifts in the global food system in the past: the Haber-Bosch process of nitrogen fixation, the rise of the supermarket, and the call for more transparency in the food system to reconnect consumers with their food. This paper concludes with an exploration of why this combination of conceptual understandings is important across the Global North/ Global South divide, and proposes a new sustainability regime where transformative change is spearheaded by a variety of social-ecological innovations.