Sustainable food security | TableDebates

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Who will win in the battle over sustainability in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, science or special interests?

In this piece, Samual Lee-Gammage offers his personal take on the debate around the US Dietary guidelines, and the recommendation of the guidelines committee that sustainability dimensions be incorporated into the forthcoming version. He also offers information about what researchers can do to support the scientific recommendations of the committee.Samuel is the Research Director for the Food Choice Taskforce (FCT), where he is responsible for knowledge management and resource development to communicate the potential of dietary shifts for public and environmental health. Samuel holds an MSc in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford and also holds a BSc in Environmental Geosciences, from the University of Bristol.

US sustainable healthy guidelines movement

A number of major US NGOs, research institutions and academics have come together to support the recommendations of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC). An open letter, signed by more than one hundred individuals and institutions has been published in major daily newspapers urging Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to adopt the DGAC’s scientific recommendations on sustainability.

UNEP discussion paper: Sustainable consumption and production indicators for the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Abstract: In the course of the ongoing discussions and negotiations on the post-2015 development agenda, a consensus emerged that current and future social, environmental and economic challenges are interlinked and must be addressed through an integrated approach.

Sustainable food production: constraints, challenges and choices by 2050

This paper asks the question “Can agriculture be sustainable?” It argues that, if we want to take a different path, we will have to make the choice to do so. It emphasises that we need to be clear that we have choices - options that need to be debated rather than subsumed in a dialogue of crisis and food shortages. The paper outlines some of these options in order to pursue a more sustainable pathway.

Brief for GSDR 2015: Sustainable Biomass in the Context of Climate Change and Rising Demand

This short briefing for the Global Sustainable Development report 2015 by two researchers at IASS, Potsdam, discusses scientific findings on the sustainability of biomass production and their implications for Sustainability, Development Policy and the SDGs in particular.

Briefing: How TTIP undermines food safety and animal welfare

In a new briefing – “How TTIP undermines food safety and animal welfare”, Friends of the Earth Europe, Compassion in World Farming, IATP, Grain and the Center for Food Safety, says that TTIP (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) is likely to restrict efforts to build healthier, fairer and more sustainable food systems on both sides of the Atlantic.

Blog-post/commentary: Will Food Sovereignty Starve the Poor and Punish the Planet?

In this commentary in Independent Science News researchers at University Pierre and Marie Curie/CNRS -National Center for Scientific Research in France discuss the concept of food sovereignty and whether or not it potentially provides a feasible and sustainable solution to feed the rural poor.

Book: Food Security Governance - Empowering Communities, Regulating Corporations

Abstract This book By Nora McKeon fills a gap in the literature by setting food security in the context of evolving global food governance. Today’s food system generates hunger alongside of food waste, burgeoning health problems, massive greenhouse gas emissions. Applying food system analysis to review how the international community has addressed food issues since World War II, this book proceeds to explain how actors link up in corporate global food chains and in the local food systems that feed most of the world’s population.

New paper argues material lifestyles are not making us happier

Although not specifically focusing on food sustainability this paper is of relevance for the larger debate on alternative models of sustainable development. The paper concludes that our modern material lifestyles are failing to make us happier, are damaging our health, are no longer sustainable and cost the overall economy tens of billions of pounds every year.