Resilience and vulnerability | TableDebates

Potential of urban and periurban agriculture in the Global South

Potential of urban and periurban agriculture in the Global South

This report and policy brief from the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture Intensification (CoSAI) examine how urban and peri-urban agriculture in the Global South can help provide healthy, safe and nutritious food, and protect against the impacts of climate change and pandemics.

IPCC report cover

Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

This report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reviews the evidence on climate change’s impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity and people. It finds that there is a greater than 50% chance that global warming will reach or exceed 1.5°C (above the 1850-1900 baseline) in the near term, even under very low emissions scenarios, and that human-induced climate change has already caused “widespread adverse impacts” for nature and for people.

Image: Jai79, Potato agriculture food, Pixabay, Pixabay Licence

Journal articles

How to feed everyone in a nuclear or volcanic winter

This paper considers how people could be fed in the event of a sudden reduction in sunlight - for example, caused by a volcanic eruption, an asteroid strike, or nuclear war. These triggers could cause global agricultural output to collapse through abrupt falls in light, temperature and precipitation. The paper identifies foods that could still be produced under these conditions, and assesses their potential contributions to nutrition.

Brexit and Agriculture

Brexit and Agriculture

This book looks at how food and agriculture policies have changed across the United Kingdom since its departure from the European Union. It argues that the UK’s four nations could go even further in their departure from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, proposing a “resilient agriculture” paradigm based on net zero and agroecology.

Image: Copernicus Sentinel-2, ESA, Flevopolder by Sentinel-2, Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/igo/deed.en). Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2018.

Support Your Locals: on international solidarity in a resilient and sustainable urban food system

Anke Brons is a PhD candidate at Aeres University of Applied Sciences Almere and the Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University & Research. Her research focuses on questions of inclusiveness in relation to healthy and sustainable food practices. Dr Sigrid Wertheim-Heck is associate professor global food system transformation in the Environmental Policy Group at WUR, and is professor Food and Healthy Living at Aeres University of Applied Sciences, both in The Netherlands. Her interest in urban food systems informs her agenda on the relationship between urbanisation, food provisioning and food consumption. She is part of TABLE’s board of directors. This blog post is based on a Dutch essay, originally published in the Flevo Campus essay bundle ‘Veerkracht als opdracht’ (Resilience as a mission).

Principles and framework for food systems transformation

Principles and framework for food systems transformation

This report from the Global Alliance for the Future of Food sets out a framework (and a worked example of using the framework) to guide the actions of individuals and organisations working on systems transformation. The framework is built around the seven principles of the Global Alliance, which are: renewability, resilience, health, equity, diversity, inclusion, and interconnectedness.

Image: stux, Mussels shells seafood, Pixabay, Pixabay Licence

Journal articles

Future foods for risk-resilient diets

This paper argues that novel foods such as microalgae, mycoprotein, molluscs and mealworm can be important sources of nutrition that are resilient to disturbances such as climate change, trade restrictions and disease.

Image: ByMotion_Juanpa-vg, Mud drought soil, Pixabay, Pixabay Licence

Journal articles

Outside the climate safe space for food production

This paper sets out a “safe climatic space” for food production and finds that, while climate change could put around one third of global crop and livestock production at risk, keeping to the Paris Agreement could reduce this risk considerably.

Growing Resilience: Feeding the city in challenging times

Growing Resilience: Feeding the city in challenging times

This essay collection from Dutch food innovation centre Flevo Campus discusses how the food system can become more resilient, bearing in mind the important events of 2020, including Brexit, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the COVID-19 pandemic.