Governments must act now to make societies and economies more resilient to shocks such as COVID-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, argues this report from UK-based international affairs think tank Chatham House. The Russia-Ukraine crisis is amplifying food insecurity and the cost of living crisis that had already followed the COVID-19 pandemic, and risks triggering a “cascade” of supply chain disruptions, market volatility, resource insecurity, the displacement of people and geopolitical upheaval. The potential for simultaneous price or supply shocks in food and energy, including those induced by climate change, is growing.

Researchers from the University of Manchester argue that the widespread switch to remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how academia can function in the future without flying, to reduce carbon emissions. They set out recommendations on how to retain low levels of aviation, including combining necessary trips, supporting cultural changes by improving virtual methods of working, and considering using carbon budgets for travel.

This paper models the impacts of a “degrowth” approach to reducing the environmental impacts of the global food system. It finds that reducing and redistributing income, alone, leads to only limited climate mitigation from food systems, because the shift towards unsustainable diets occurs at low income levels. Instead, a “sustainable transformation” scenario (incorporating income redistribution, and “efficiency-based” carbon tax, a shift towards the EAT-Lancet planetary health diet, and reduced food waste) is able to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions for the food system by 2100.

This paper sets out 26 research priorities related to improving food environments, nutrition and health in Africa, based on the first Africa Food Environment Research Network Meeting. The research priorities focus broadly on understanding the key drivers of food consumption and acquisition, and on interventions and policies to improve food environments.

This paper examines the impacts of methane on climate, ecosystems and air pollution. It argues that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change limits its regulation of methane to the climate impacts of methane on a 100-year timeframe, ignoring both near-term climate impacts and wider impacts.

In this podcast by the Sustainable Food Trust, molecular geneticist Dr Michael Antoniou explains how regulation of gene editing is changing in the UK, as well as the potential health risks of gene editing.

Maasai pastoralists are calling for international support to stop the Tanzanian government's plans to evict thousands of people from their ancestral lands in Ngorongoro and Loliondo to make way for tourism, development and wildlife hunting. In a public letter, Maasai community leaders argue that the Tanzanian government is falsely blaming livestock grazing and population growth for environmental degradation, to justify the mass evictions.

Using European case studies, this book examines how knowledge about food is transmitted and circulated by a wide range of actors, including textbooks, the press, cookery classes, social media, bloggers, marketers, and so on.

This report from Friends of Ocean Action, FishWise, Global Fishing Watch and the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions discusses how seafood providers can use data to avoid illegal, unregulated or unreported fishing. It describes the first phase of the development of a “Supply Chain Risk Tool” that gathers data on fishing fleets and vessels from multiple sources and identifies potential risks.