Foodscapes in Transition: Policies and Politics Advancing Sustainable Development and Social Justice (original) (raw)
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2018
Dossier de candidature-Session Quatrième Convention Internationale d'Histoire et des Cultures de l'Alimentation-7-8 juin 2018-Tours (France) À noter :-Le modérateur ne peut être communicant au sein de la session qu'il anime.-L'organisateur pourra être le modérateur de la session. S'il est au nombre des communicants, il lui revient de trouver un modérateur ou, à défaut, un modérateur sera attribué par les organisateurs de la conférence.-Les sessions dureront 90 minutes. Outre le modérateur, elles comprendront soit un modérateur et deux communications d'une durée de trente minutes chacune soit trois communications d'une durée de vingt minutes chacune. Ces communications pourront être présentées en anglais ou en français.
Food Policies and Sustainability
Food Policies and Sustainability, 2010
This is the output of an online course held by the university of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo (Italy). Students and professors have worked together in profiling which kind of policies could be implemented in the fields of: Biodiversity and Ecosystems, Energy and Systemic Production, Traditional Knowledge, Gender Issues and Immaterial Values, Social Systems and Transformation, Goods, Common Resources and Exchanges, Law, Rights and Policies, Pleasure and Well-being, Sustainable Education.
Introduction: Is Europe skilling for sustainable food?
Deleted Journal, 2022
Why an ethnographic contribution connecting skill, food, and sustainability? Sustainable food is a pressing concern in Europe, as elsewhere around the world. As we write this introduction, diverse socioeconomic actors operating in increasingly complex and challenging contexts are experiencing new vulnerabilities caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, energy crisis, and war in Ukraine. Startling increases in food poverty are being reported by European media, with an additional 200 million people confronting acute food insecurity since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic (Harvey 2022). Philanthropic organisations rush to open new food banks and parents report cutting back on food consumption, while the multinational corporations that control 70-90 per cent of the global grain trade have made a "record bonanza" since the Ukraine war began (Harvey 2022; Lawson 2022; Yucel 2022). Many agree that we need radical changes to make food provisioning more sustainable. In the words of the United Nations, "Everyone, everywhere must take action and work together to transform the way the world produces, consumes, and thinks about food" (UN n.d.). This daunting scenario is directly addressed by the four articles and report that comprise this special issue of kritisk etnografi. With contributions grounded in first-hand ethnographic observation of diverse European contexts, we consider our positioning in food provisioning systems: not only where we are and where we need to go, but what is at hand to make the change, what works and what is stunted in its striving-often by sociocultural considerations that rarely enter dominant sustainability agendas. Anthropological research on food provisioning is seldom spotlighted at international summits or featured in major news stories, yet ethnographers know a great deal about "the way the world produces, consumes, and thinks about food" (UN n.d.), including which action is (or is not) congenial to "transforming" foodways in specific contexts and among specific people (e.g., Barnard 2016; Grasseni 2013; 2020; Pilgeram 2011; Rissing 2019). Our ethnographic insights on "sustainable food" in Europe examine skill in relation to food production, distribution, and consumption. If change is what is needed for Europe and the world to achieve sustainable foodways, then skills to support that change must be developed. Sustainability talk is here to stay, but what does it mean?
Democratising Food: The Case for a Deliberative Approach
Review of International Studies, 2020
Prevailing political and ethical approaches which have been used to both critique and propose alternatives to the existing food system are lacking. Although food security, food sovereignty, food justice and food democracy all offer something important to our reflection on the global food system, none is adequate as an alternative to the status quo. This paper analyses each in order to identify the prerequisites for such an alternative approach to food governance. These include a focus on goods like nutrition and health, equitable distribution, supporting livelihoods, environmental sustainability, and social justice. However, other goods, like the interests of nonhuman animals, are not presently represented. Moreover, incorporating all of them is incredibly demanding, and some are in tension. This raises the question of how each can be appropriately accommodated and balanced. The paper proposes that this ought to be done through deliberative democratic processes which incorporate the interests of all relevant parties at the local, national, regional and global levels. In other words, the paper calls for a deliberative approach to the democratisation of food. It also proposes that one promising potential for incorporating the interests of all affected parties and addressing power imbalances lies in organising the scope and remit of deliberation around food type.
Frontiers in sustainable food systems, 2023
Climate change is considered one of the biggest challenges worldwide, and the reshaping of the world's climatic patterns has already resulted in changing ecological systems. Recent trends indicate that global greenhouse gas emissions have tripled compared to pre-industrial levels, reaching over 1,900 parts per billion (Tollefson, 2022). In the last several decades, climate change has affected the environment and ecosystems in many ways: from increasing temperatures, decreasing water availability and food security levels worldwide to expanding land desertification. To mitigate the effects of climate change and to maintain the world's temperature under 1.5 degrees to 2 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels, as stipulated by the Paris Agreement, the European Union (EU) is set on making Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050 within the framework of the "European Green Deal" (European Commission, 2019). When assessing the chief mitigation and adaptation responses, the EU is particularly keen on reforming farming practices to achieve "fair, healthy, and environmentallyfriendly" food systems (European Commission, 2019). The "Farm to Fork" and "Biodiversity" strategies (European Commision, 2020a,b), alongside the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), namely SDG 2-which aims to end hunger and all forms of malnutrition by 2030 (United Nations, 2015)are deemed pivotal to the European sustainability pact. In this sense, the EU recognises that food systems are as much a major contributor to climate change, water stress, and pollution, not to mention their impact on human, animal, and ecosystem health, as they have the potential to reverse these fundamental problems. The EU's sustainability goal is to repair food systems to deliver environmental, health, social, and economic benefits while eliminating injustices such as small-scale producers' low income and limited access to markets. In the above-mentioned European strategies, there is a clear push to drastically reduce pesticide and synthetic fertiliser use (up to 50% by 2030), decarbonise the food chain, and increase the area of organic farming and the availability of organic seeds. In this manner, the EU is trying to broaden its mitigation and adaptation options from a focus on flood protection, urban planning, and water management (Aguiar et al., 2018) to a new, more comprehensive, resilient, and sustainable approach: one that places food systems and their actors at the centre of a green, just, and inclusive transition (European Commission, 2019, p. 12). Unfortunately, these key objectives have not been given clear targets. EU member states are systematically failing to invest in mitigating environmental degradation by intensive agricultural practices, e.g., large-scale monocultures of cash crops (BirdLife Europe and the European Environmental Bureau, 2022a,b). Instead, money continues to go to destructive forms of farming while vital environmental schemes are severely underfunded.
Paradox of Transition: Two Reports on How to Move Towards Sustainable Food Systems
Development and Change, 2017
The paradox of intentional transitions is how incremental changes-or small transitions-can lead to a fundamental transition-a change of states from unsustainability to sustainability. To make the question precise enough to be useful depends on several things. First, it is crucial how one identifies the present situation, that is, how one defines sustainability and measures unsustainability; second, it matters how one identifies key actors and their interests. Most important, in my view, is history. This means interpreting the origins of the present situation-what interests, ideas and institutions emerged at different moments, and how they converged, diverged and conflicted to create layers of inherited structures. The present moment includes both institutions and practices, and dominant and contested ideas; these include growth and efficiency and how to measure them, what and whose knowledge is valued, and how nature and technology are related. That history must include the policies that have consciously or unconsciously shaped historical actions. Finally, these can determine whether a shared intention exists among actors, or alternatively, how opposition and power might be addressed in order to move towards sustainability. Only then can it be specified how social actors might choose short-term actions that promise to lead towards the desirable state, rather than perverse outcomes.