Global – Sustainability

Food Systems (One Earth Journal by Cell Press)

Access to food is a universal need and a fundamental right, yet current patterns of production and consumption are failing to address issues of food security while simultaneously deteriorating planetary health. In recognition of the urgent need to transform the way we consume, produce, and think about food, this collection of opinion pieces, authoritative reviews, original research articles, and artwork outlines the complexity of the challenge as well as potential solutions towards sustainable food systems for all. You can use the search feature to filter for Open Access Articles.

One Earth is Cell Press’ flagship sustainability journal. One Earth provides a home for high-quality research and perspectives that significantly advance our ability to better understand and address today’s sustainability challenges. We publish monthly thematic issues that aspire to break down barriers between the natural, social and applied sciences and the humanities, stimulate the cross-pollination of ideas, and encourage transformative research. They particularly encourage submissions with cross-disciplinary interest. Studies can be conducted at all spatial, temporal, and socio-political scales, but all submissions must offer a significant conceptual advance.

Solving the Great Food Puzzle: Right Innovation, Right Impact, Right Place. (2023)

WWF (2023). Solving the Great Food Puzzle: Right Innovation, Right Impact, Right Place. Loring, P., Loken, B., Meyer, M., Polack, S., Paolini, A., et al. WWF, Gland, Switzerland

Our food systems are at the centre of some of the biggest challenges of our time, which means they must also be at the centre of our quest for solutions.

As we work to solve the Great Food Puzzle, innovations are key to unlocking the potential of food systems as solutions to the nature and climate crises.

On its own, innovation won’t be enough to achieve healthy diets from sustainable food systems for all; still, innovations can accelerate national-level food system transformation by helping to close three critical gaps that can hinder action in countries. These gaps are: (i) the ambition gap; (ii) the transformation gap; and (iii) the implementation gap.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution that can deliver the food systems transformations needed in all countries around the world. The Right Innovation, Right Impact, Right Place framework will help anyone designing or supporting innovations in food systems to build an innovation toolkit to maximize impact and achieve national-level health and environmental goals.

Ultimately and most importantly, who is at the table and who is empowered to take the lead matters. What makes this paper novel is the set of concepts and questions we have assembled and how we bring these to life with examples of a wide range of innovations from around the world, some novel and highly technological, others familiar but applied in creative new ways.

As we all work to solve the Great Food Puzzle, we hope the Right Innovation, Right Impact, Right Place framework presented in this study will help ensure that each action taken will have the most impact in the shortest time possible.

RIGHT INNOVATION
means choosing innovations that amplify the impacts of transformation levers and ideally can be applied to affect one or more levers to accelerate change.

RIGHT IMPACT
means anticipating the kind of change and impact any proposed innovation might have in a particular place.

RIGHT PLACE
means paying close attention to the social and ecological context in which the innovation is to be implemented.

Summary: Equipping nutrition graduates for the complex realities of practice: Using practitioner perspectives and experiences to inform authentic sustainability curriculum (2023)

Maher, J, Ashford, T, Verdonck, M, English, E, Burkhart, S. Equipping nutrition graduates for the complex realities of practice: Using practitioner perspectives and experiences to inform authentic sustainability curriculum. J Hum Nutr Diet. 2023; 1– 11. https://doi.org/10.1111/jhn.13159

Open access link to article:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jhn.13159

Relevant to:

Dietitians, Practitioners, Nutrition students, Nutrition graduates

Questions the research focuses on:

How do a cohort of Australian N&D professionals perceive opportunities for integrating sustainability into practice? What are the challenges or barriers to realizing these?

Bottom line for nutrition practice:

We recognize practitioners as a source of experience, anticipating where sustainability discourse and nutrition practice intersect.

Abstract:

Background: Nutrition professionals’ function at the nexus of food, nutrition status and the myriad of determinants influencing these. However, defining our role in food system transformation requires a multifaceted and deep understanding of sustainability in the context of nutrition and dietetics (N&D). Practitioner perspectives and experiences provide a rich source of practice wisdom that can inform authentic curriculum to equip students for the complex realities of practice; however, there is limited understanding of these in the Australian higher education setting.

Methods: Qualitative methodology using semi structured interviews with 10 Australian N&D professionals. Thematic analysis was used to understand how they perceive opportunities and barriers for integrating sustainability into practice.

Results: Practitioners’ experience in sustainability practice varied. Themes were identified in two categories: opportunities and barriers. Themes that reflected future practice opportunities included “Preparing the workforce” (for academics and practitioners interfacing with students), “Practical individual level work” and “System level and policy interests”. Themes that were considered barriers to integrating sustainability in practice included “lack of contextual evidence” and “complexity and competing priorities”.

Conclusions: Our findings make a novel contribution to the current literature as we recognise practitioners as a source of experience anticipating where sustainability and nutrition practice intersect. Our work provides practice-informed content and context that may assist educators to create authentic sustainability-focused curriculum and assessment to replicate the complexity of practice.

Details of results:

Practitioners found it difficult to name specific examples of sustainability in practice, possibly because of the current landscape where there is a lack of consensus on what sustainability in nutrition and dietetic practice is.

Integrating sustainability into nutrition practice was associated with two themes categorized as barriers. These were: a lack of contextual evidence, complexity and competing priorities.

Integrating sustainability into nutrition practice was also associated with three themes for opportunities: learning and teaching practice to prepare the workforce; individual-level practice and application; and broader system/policy-level practice.

The results show that opportunities and barriers are interconnected, and it is likely that the perceived opportunities can be realized if sectorial, institutional, and government policies change and the profession advances and adapts.

Preparing students for practicing with a sustainability lens requires integration of sustainability in its various forms into N&D curriculum and equipping them with the skills and capabilities to contribute meaningfully to N&D practice from an individual to food system level.

Knowledge alone may not equip graduates to effectively practice for human and planetary health. Moving forward, practice insights provide a productive platform for curriculum development, both situating practice within the current complex contexts or “realities” at the same time as also considering a future that integrates sustainability and nutrition more closely.

There is a predominant environmental focus that may limit the effectiveness of student training, particularly in addressing more challenging and complex situations or settings where environmental concerns must also be balanced with social and economic realities.

If governments or institutions have not yet included sustainability within their policies, curriculum developers can. This will then shift the expectation of N&D graduates who may be able to advocate for change from inside government and institutions.

Of additional interest:

⇾ ICDA Learning Modules – These three learning modules are structured to support your knowledge in:

understanding foundational concepts of sustainability and food systems,
understanding the relevance of SFS to nutrition and dietetic practice, and
being able to apply SFS concepts in your practice.

⇾ NDA SFS Position Papers – Several nutrition and dietetics associations are officially recognising the relevance of Sustainable Food Systems (SFS) and/or sustainable diets to nutrition and dietetics practice.

⇾ SFS Education in Nutrition & Dietetics degrees: Global Case Studies – International Dietetic educators integrating sustainability into their curricula. The is an online platform for sharing examples serves as a series of mini case studies

⇾ Teaching Food Systems and Sustainability in Nutrition Education and Dietetic Training: Lessons for Educators (2013) – This is a PDF compilation of research and experiential lesson plans from food, nutrition and dietetic educators in the US and Canada.

⇾ The Food Sustainability Index (FSI) as an Educational Tool (2016) – The FSI has an intended audience of university students and graduate students, by can be used for anyone who interested in learning more about the connection of food and nutrition to sustainable food systems and the Sustainable Development Goals.

⇾ Sustainability: nutrition and dietetic students’ perceptions (2020) – This Australian study explored nutrition and dietetic undergraduate students’ self-reported views and actions related to sustainability, with a view to building a holistic curriculum that includes content and competencies required to address UN Sustainable Development Goals.

⇾ Leveraging Online Learning to Promote Systems Thinking for Sustainable Food Systems Training in Dietetics Education (2021) – A multidisciplinary group of educators, learners, and food systems experts representing eight different institutions across the US worked together over one year to develop, pilot test, and evaluate two interactive webinar series. The series was provided for dietetics interns and graduate students at four university sites in the United States between March and May 2019.

⇾ Summary: How do dietetics students learn about sustainability? A scoping review (2023) – Despite increasing discussion about the role of dietitians in supporting sustainable food systems, effective integration into dietetics curricula is understudied. Some evidence points to the importance of experiential learning, and scaffolded learning about SFS through integration into a number of different courses.

Conflict of interest/funding:

The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.

Corresponding author:

Judith Maher, Doctor of Philosophy (Nutrition and Dietetics), jmaher@usc.edu.au

Summary: How do dietetics students learn about sustainability? A scoping review (2023)

McCormack, J., Rutherford, S., Ross, L. J., Noble, C., & Bialocerkowski, A. (2023). How do dietetics students learn about sustainability? A scoping review. Nutrition & Dietetics. https://doi.org/10.1111/1747-0080.12795

Link to the article

Open Access: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1747-0080.12795

Relevant to:

Dietetic Educators, Dietitians, Dietetic Students

Questions the research focuses on:

What teaching approaches and evaluation strategies have been used to underpin the learning activities focused on sustainability in dietetics entry-level curricula?
What are the learning outcomes of these activities based on the Kirkpatrick-Barr framework?
Have the UNESCO and Commonwealth Secretariat recommendations translated into the delivery of sustainability content in nutrition and dietetics entry-level curricula based on articles published since their development?

Bottom line for nutrition practice:

Despite increasing discussion about the role of dietitians in supporting sustainable food systems, effective integration into dietetics curricula is understudied. Without clear competencies and guidance, educators are doing this ad hoc. More guidance is needed. Some evidence points to the importance of experiential learning, and scaffolded learning about SFS through integration into a number of different courses.

Abstract:

Aim: Globally, sustainability and planetary health are emerging as areas of critical importance. In 2015, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted by the United Nations member states. Since then, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the Commonwealth Secretariat have published guidelines for educators to embed sustainability content into curricula. This scoping review aims to identify how student dietitians learn about sustainability, how learning opportunities are evaluated, their outcomes, and whether these guidelines have translated into teaching activities contained in dietetic degrees.

Methods: A scoping review was used to address the aims. Eight electronic databases and Google Scholar were searched from inception to March 2022 for articles describing dietetics students’ participation in learning activities focused on sustainability. Data that addressed the research aims were charted independently by two researchers, then narratively synthesized.

Results: Twelve articles met the inclusion criteria. A range of teaching approaches and evaluation methods were used, from passive learning in lectures to experiential learning activities. A change in knowledge or behaviour was found for experiential learning activities (n = 5). For articles published after 2015 (n = 9), two mentioned the Sustainable Development Goals and no articles referenced the published guidelines.

Conclusions: A paucity of evidence exists describing how dietetics students learn about sustainability and their learning outcomes. Of the 12 articles published, varied teaching approaches and evaluation methods have resulted in inconsistencies in the reporting of outcomes. The minimal reference to the Sustainable Development Goals and published guidelines suggests a slow translation of knowledge to practice.

Details of results:

The database search yielded 1363 unique items. A total of 12 articles met the inclusion criteria and were therefore included in this scoping review. With 12 articles found, each used a unique method. This variety in both the teaching approach and evaluation makes it difficult for dietetics educators to choose an approach that maximizes the knowledge and skills attained by students.

Given the drive to upskill both students and dietitians alike in this critical area of practice, longer-term outcomes should be measured. Arguably, the depth and complexity of the knowledge required to develop dietetics students who are competent in this area cannot be taught in one course and requires the development of knowledge and skills to occur over a longer time period. This aligns with recommendations made by UNESCO and the Commonwealth Secretariate that suggest scaffolding content across multiple courses to develop key competencies. UNESCO recommends that educators embed an action-oriented, transformative pedagogy, that is scaffolded across the curriculum, and not contained in a stand-alone course.

Based on this review, only three articles referred to the Sustainable Development Goals, and no articles referred to the UNESCO or Commonwealth Secretariat Guidelines.

Without clear competencies from professional bodies and guidance on what to include in the curriculum, academics with an interest in sustainability may add content only when necessary.

Based on this review of peer-reviewed and grey literature, there is limited literature to describe how student dietitians are learning about sustainability within their dietetics education programs. The variable teaching approaches and evaluation methods used have resulted in inconsistencies in the reporting of outcomes, and the minimal reference to the Sustainable Development Goals and other published guidelines suggests a slow translation of knowledge to practice in the higher education setting.

Of additional interest:

Case Study: SFS in Dietetic Education – Join us! We are an international group of collaborating dietetic educator who share our stories about integrating sustainable food systems into nutrition and dietetic curriculum.

Teaching Food Systems and Sustainability in Nutrition Education and Dietetic Training: Lessons for Educators (2013) This is a PDF compilation of research and experiential lesson plans from food, nutrition and dietetic educators in the US and Canada. It is intended for the use of educators who teach university level courses, mentor dietetic interns or supervise service learning projects in nutrition and dietetics for school-age youth or adults.

(EU) Teachers Forum – Supporting teachers in educating food knowledge (2022 Dec 12) Are you interested in #FoodLiteracy & education in schools? Are you looking for best practices & #resources to use in the classroom?

🌍 Global Networking Event on Sustainable Food Systems in Nutrition & Dietetics Education (2023 Jun 7-8) The event was for educators, trainers, nutrition & dietetics associations & others involved in education / training / professional development.

Conflict of interest/ funding:

Open access publishing facilitated by Griffith University, as part of the Wiley – Griffith University agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

Corresponding author:

Joanna McCormack, Accredited Practising Dietitian (APD) j.mccormack@griffith.edu.au

Seaweed’s contribution to food security in low- and middle-income countries: Benefits from production, processing and trade (2023 Jun)

Patrick Webb, Natalie K. Somers, Shakuntala H. Thilsted. Seaweed’s contribution to food security in low- and middle-income countries: Benefits from production, processing and trade. Global Food Security. Volume 37. (2023) 100686, ISSN 2211-9124, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2023.100686.

Excerpts from the paper: One proposed solution has been to focus more on water-based food systems in general (often referred to as ‘blue foods’), and on seaweed in particular. But how realistic are such propositions? This paper explores the potential of seaweed to address food insecurity and poor nutrition in LMICs, alongside its potential to mitigate the carbon footprint of food systems globally.

This paper has five parts:

First, an introduction
The second section describes the types of seaweeds and major uses, their nutrient content and environmental attributes.
Section three explores patterns and trends in the production, trade and consumption of seaweed, globally and within LMICs.
A fourth section focuses on practical challenges and constraints to upscaling the use of seaweed in resource-constrained countries and highlights the kinds of investments needed to overcome hurdles.
The final conclusions section offers recommendations for policy action.

Highlights:

Seaweed production globally has grown rapidly in recent decades.
Most growth was in Asia, but there have been production increases in Africa and Latin America.
There is growing attention to the potential for seaweed to provide non-terrestrial nutrients without the need for land, freshwater, or chemicals.
This paper explores opportunities and challenges relating to the farming and commercialization of seaweed in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
Data gaps and coverage impede a full understanding of trends and patterns in what is produced or consumed .
There appears to be potential for seaweed-related activities to grow in many coastal LMICs.
hat said, such activities would contribute more to food security through income effects than as inputs to diets.
Seaweed can be a high-value export crop contributing to LMIC food security by increasing export potential and household purchasing power.

Measurement of diets that are healthy, environmentally sustainable, affordable, and equitable: A scoping review of metrics, findings, and research gaps (2023 Apr)

Citation: Webb P, Livingston Staffier K, Lee H, Howell B, Battaglia K, Bell BM, Matteson J, McKeown NM, Cash SB, Zhang FF, Decker Sparks JL and Blackstone NT (2023) Measurement of diets that are healthy, environmentally sustainable, affordable, and equitable: A scoping review of metrics, findings, and research gaps. Front. Nutr. 10:1125955. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2023.1125955

Introduction: Research on the impacts of dietary patterns on human and planetary health is a rapidly growing field. A wide range of metrics, datasets, and analytical techniques has been used to explore the role of dietary choices/constraints in driving greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, environmental degradation, health and disease outcomes, and the affordability of food baskets. Many argue that each domain is important, but few have tackled all simultaneously in analyzing diet-outcome relationships.

Methods: This paper reviews studies published between January 2015 and December 2021 (inclusive) that examined dietary patterns in relation to at least two of the following four thematic pillars: (i) planetary health, including, climate change, environmental quality, and natural resource impacts, (ii) human health and disease, (iii) economic outcomes, including diet cost/affordability, and (iv) social outcomes, e.g., wages, working conditions, and culturally relevant diets. We systematically screened 2,425 publications by title and abstract and included data from 42 eligible publications in this review.

Results: Most dietary patterns used were statistically estimated or simulated rather than observed. A rising number of studies consider the cost/affordability of dietary scenarios in relation to optimized environmental and health outcomes. However, only six publications incorporate social sustainability outcomes, which represents an under-explored dimension of food system concerns.

Discussion: This review suggests a need for (i) transparency and clarity in datasets used and analytical methods; (ii) explicit integration of indicators and metrics linking social and economic issues to the commonly assessed diet-climate-planetary ecology relationships; (iii) inclusion of data and researchers from low- and middle-income countries; (iv) inclusion of processed food products to reflect the reality of consumer choices globally; and (v) attention to the implications of findings for policymakers. Better understanding is urgently needed on dietary impacts on all relevant human and planetary domains simultaneously.

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2023.1125955/full#supplementary-material

*Correspondence: Patrick Webb, patrick.webb@tufts.edu

Aquaculture Stewardship Council (Website)

The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) is the world’s leading certification scheme for farmed seafood – known as aquaculture – and the ASC label only appears on food from farms that have been independently assessed and certified as being environmentally and socially responsible. Aquaculture produces over half of the seafood eaten around the world and will be vital in providing healthy, affordable protein to the world’s rapidly growing population in the future. But like all food production, it has impacts and must be done responsibly.

ASC develops and manages the strictest standards in the industry. These standards include hundreds of requirements covering the potential impacts of aquaculture – including water quality, responsible sourcing of feed, disease prevention, animal welfare, the fair treatment and pay of workers, and maintaining positive relationships with neighbouring communities.

The ASC Metrics Methodology project to creates transparency and consistency into the ‘metric’ standard-setting. The ‘Baseline’ Methodology published in November 2020 was issued for a 62-day public consultation period. It is applicable to all species-specific metrics and aims to provide minimum requirements for setting and/or revising metrics within any of the ASC standards.

Click here to find a farm, supplier, or product around the globe. You’ll also be able to access ASC country / regional websites from this link as well.

The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) was launched in 2010 and we have been collecting data since the first farms achieved certification against our standards in 2012. You can visit their dashboard to see what countries are covered and how many frames and products are included. This provide an important picture of ASC’s growth, the reach of environmentally and socially responsible seafood choices, and inform market opportunities. Aggregated data are often used by stakeholders in their own research and understanding on responsible farming practices.

Click here to explore the database via the ASC dashboard.

Updated 2023 April

The vital roles of blue foods in the global food system (2022 Jun)

Michelle Tigchelaar, Jim Leape, Fiorenza Micheli, Edward H. Allison, Xavier Basurto, Abigail Bennett, Simon R. Bush, Ling Cao, William W.L. Cheung, Beatrice Crona, Fabrice DeClerck, Jessica Fanzo, Stefan Gelcich, Jessica A. Gephart, Christopher D. Golden, Benjamin S. Halpern, Christina C. Hicks, Malin Jonell, Avinash Kishore, J. Zachary Koehn, David C. Little, Rosamond L. Naylor, Michael J. Phillips, Elizabeth R. Selig, Rebecca E. Short, U. Rashid Sumaila, Shakuntala H. Thilsted, Max Troell, Colette C.C. Wabnitz. The vital roles of blue foods in the global food system. Global Food Security 33 (2022) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2022.100637

Highlights

Blue foods are diverse, rich in essential nutrients and fatty acids, and can offer sustainable alternatives to terrestrial animal-sourced foods.
Blue foods are often missing from food system analyses, policies, and investments.
This paper offers three recommendations for realizing the potential of blue foods in sustainable, healthy, and just food systems.

Abstract

Blue foods play a central role in food and nutrition security for billions of people and are a cornerstone of the livelihoods, economies, and cultures of many coastal and riparian communities. Blue foods are extraordinarily diverse, are often rich in essential micronutrients and fatty acids, and can often be produced in ways that are more environmentally sustainable than terrestrial animal-source foods. Capture fisheries constitute the largest wild-food resource for human extraction that would be challenging to replace.

Yet, despite their unique value, blue foods have often been left out of food system analyses, policies, and investments.

Here, we focus on three imperatives for realizing the potential of blue foods: (1) Bring blue foods into the heart of food system decision-making; (2) Protect and develop the potential of blue foods to help end malnutrition; and (3) Support the central role of small-scale actors in fisheries and aquaculture. Recognition of the importance of blue foods for food and nutrition security constitutes a critical justification to preserve the integrity and diversity of aquatic species and ecosystems.

Fig. 1. Overview of blue food benefits and challenges and the three areas of policy action identified in this paper that would help realize the potential of blue foods to contribute to sustainable, healthy, and just food system outcomes.

To make a case for integrating blue foods into global food system decision-making, we draw on the findings of the Blue Food Assessment.

These policy recommendations should not be seen as all-encompassing. Instead, they are an entry point into making blue foods part of food system transformations.

Four ways blue foods can help achieve food system ambitions across nations (2023)

Crona, B.I., Wassénius, E., Jonell, M. et al. Four ways blue foods can help achieve food system ambitions across nations. Nature 616, 104–112 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05737-x

Abstract

Blue foods, sourced in aquatic environments, are important for the economies, livelihoods, nutritional security and cultures of people in many nations. They are often nutrient rich, generate lower emissions and impacts on land and water than many terrestrial meats, and contribute to the health, wellbeing and livelihoods of many rural communities.

The Blue Food Assessment recently evaluated nutritional, environmental, economic and justice dimensions of blue foods globally. Here we integrate these findings and translate them into four policy objectives to help realize the contributions that blue foods can make to national food systems around the world: ensuring supplies of critical nutrients, providing healthy alternatives to terrestrial meat, reducing dietary environmental footprints and safeguarding blue food contributions to nutrition, just economies and livelihoods under a changing climate.

To account for how context-specific environmental, socio-economic and cultural aspects affect this contribution, we assess the relevance of each policy objective for individual countries, and examine associated co-benefits and trade-offs at national and international scales.
- We find that in many African and South American nations, facilitating consumption of culturally relevant blue food, especially among nutritionally vulnerable population segments, could address vitamin B12 and omega-3 deficiencies.
- Meanwhile, in many global North nations, cardiovascular disease rates and large greenhouse gas footprints from ruminant meat intake could be lowered through moderate consumption of seafood with low environmental impact.

The analytical framework we provide also identifies countries with high future risk, for whom climate adaptation of blue food systems will be particularly important. Overall the framework helps decision makers to assess the blue food policy objectives most relevant to their geographies, and to compare and contrast the benefits and trade-offs associated with pursuing these objectives.

Fig. 2: Overlap in relevance between different policy objectives.

The numbers in parentheses in the top row represent the total number of countries for which each policy is relevant.

Each cell shows the number of countries (in parentheses) for which both column- and row-heading policies are relevant, as a proportion of countries for which the column-heading policy is relevant.

Relevance in this figure indicates countries categorized as ‘highly relevant’ or ‘relevant’ for a given policy.

Fig. 3: Example of hypothetical trade-offs associated with policies pursuing economic and/or nutritional benefits of blue food.

The figure illustrates one set of trade-offs in policy outcomes that may result across the dimensions of environment, equity, economy and nutrition, depending on the degree of prioritization of either increasing domestic blue food supplies for nutritional outcome, or maximizing monetary value through exports of blue foods.

The degree of emphasis placed on either policy goal is represented by the blue bars.

Likely outcomes for each dimension are represented by coloured boxes and the strength of outcome is represented by plus and minus symbols; with positive outcomes depicted in green, and negative in pink.

Sustainable commodification aligned with local preferences and demand represents an example of how a balance could be struck to optimize positive environmental, inclusive, economic and nutritional outcomes.

Unknown impacts, or where policy objectives are judged to not have a strong impact, are depicted in grey. E. Wikander/Azote.

Compound climate risks threaten aquatic food system benefits (2021)

Tigchelaar, M., Cheung, W.W.L., Mohammed, E.Y. et al. Compound climate risks threaten aquatic food system benefits. Nat Food 2, 673–682 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00368-9 (open source)

Abstract

Aquatic foods from marine and freshwater systems are critical to the nutrition, health, livelihoods, economies and cultures of billions of people worldwide, but climate-related hazards may compromise their ability to provide these benefits. Here, we estimate national-level aquatic food system climate risk using an integrative food systems approach that connects climate hazards impacting marine and freshwater capture fisheries and aquaculture to their contributions to sustainable food system outcomes.

We show that without mitigation, climate hazards pose high risks to nutritional, social, economic and environmental outcomes worldwide—especially for wild-capture fisheries in Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and Small Island Developing States. For countries projected to experience compound climate risks, reducing societal vulnerabilities can lower climate risk by margins similar to meeting Paris Agreement mitigation targets. System-level interventions addressing dimensions such as governance, gender equity and poverty are needed to enhance aquatic and terrestrial food system resilience and provide investments with large co-benefits towards meeting the Sustainable Development Goals.

Fig. 3: Climate risk profiles based on differences in hazards, exposure and vulnerability across food system outcomes.

On the basis of a cluster analysis, we identify four climate risk profiles for aquatic food system outcomes.

The profiles are based on the characteristics of countries that have ‘high’ or ‘very high’ climate risk for at least one food system outcome by mid-century under a high-emissions scenario.

The profile descriptions are based on median indicator values for each profile.

Individual countries within each cluster can deviate slightly from this characterization. SLR, sea level rise.

Results, excerpt from Towards climate-resilient aquatic foods

For countries with high marine fisheries dependence, including many SIDS, one of the challenges will be to design measures that strike an appropriate balance between supporting economic development aspirations through efficiency and revenue generation, and supporting food security through local and domestic consumption of fish (for example, climate-smart agreements for transboundary resources and the development of climate-resilient aquaculture for food security).
- For countries where freshwater aquaculture contributes to poor environmental outcomes, solutions may target the adoption of integrated farming solutions or of technological innovations such as resource-efficient production systems that can be isolated from the environment.
- In both contexts, solutions need support through enabling government policies, functional institutions at the national to community levels and sustainable, responsible financial investment.

Enhancing climate resilience for highly vulnerable countries facing compound climate risk—from freshwater and deltaic fisheries and aquaculture or from marine fisheries—is most challenging and urgent given that these countries are projected to have the greatest number of food system outcomes experiencing high climate risk.
- For such countries, resilience efforts focused on aquatic food systems provide options (such as nature-based solutions (for example, mangrove, reef and seagrass restoration to aid coastal storm protection and enhance aquatic ecosystem productivity), sustainable intensification, livelihood diversification and investments in local value chains), but these efforts need to be part of a more generalized resilience framework that addresses the social dimensions of vulnerability (for example, through strengthening governance, promoting gender equity and reducing poverty).
- Climate solutions that require public sector investments must be able to deliver both social and political gains to increase their acceptability to the public choice-maker. Ultimately, a generalized resilience approach means enhancing the capacity of coastal and riparian people to become the agents of societally desired systems transformation and to recognize aquatic food systems as integral to socio-economic development efforts and nutrition policies and overall food system resilience.