UNEP: Sustainable Development Goals for Achieving a Sustainable Food System and Green Economy
Posted: June 5, 2014
Categories: Food in the News / GoodFoodBites / Research
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the voice for the environment to the United Nations, has recently released their POST-2015 Development Agenda to address current and future social, economic, and environmental challenges.
In 2015, Sustainable Development Goals will replace the UN Millennium Development Goals to ensure sufficient coverage of the environment dimension in development. These goals include focusing on achieving a global sustainable food system and green economy.
The UNEP identified four major environmental drivers of food and nutrition insecurity:
• demand for energy and water for food production,
• food waste,
• marginalization of smallholder food producers
• political and institutional obstacles.
The publication highlights the role of technology in creating a global food system crisis in which:
• 40% of world’s agricultural land is seriously degraded,
• pollinator services are severely threatened,
• human health is jeopardized from pesticide toxicity,
• overfishing has caused declining fish stocks, and
• there is severe deforestation.
In response to the four environmental drivers listed above, the UNEP proposes that a sustainable food system can be increased through a four-pronged approach.
1) A major shift towards a diversified, resilient eco-agricultural system that restores degraded land, employs adaptive strategy to combat a changing climate, practices indigenous and sustainable farming/fishing, and eliminates dependence on toxic pesticides and chemicals.
2) Optimize efficiency of production of food, water and energy by improving energy efficiency at every stage in food production, recycling and using waste for energy, improve water resource management and seeking local renewable energy.
3) Improve equal access and rights to natural resources by reducing uncertainty around climate change, price volatility and linking agricultural subsidies to sustainability.
4) A major shift towards sustainable diets and consumption that minimizes environmental impact, maximizes nutritional value and promotes sustainable livelihoods for farmers.
In addition to the UNEP Post on a sustainable food system, the organization released an outline on the drivers of poverty and how a green economy will achieve economic development and minimize environmental risk. They define a green economy as an economy that “improves human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities”.
Four solutions were recommended:
1) New measures to understand progress towards sustainable development by replacing GDP and Human Development Index with an index that includes a full range of assets
2) Equitable access to natural resources and land and tenure rights to increase income and livelihoods of poor and marginalized groups
3) Initiatives for payments for ecosystem services and restoration of ecosystems by creating new market-based instruments, public investment in restoration and job creation
4) Green fiscal policies and investments to improve sustainability of agriculture which can increase crop productivity and farmer income
5) Innovation of institutions, supply chains and technology to provide access to sustainability-derived basic services to reduce poverty and improve environment
What do you think about UNEP’s approach to a global sustainable food system? Do they support Sustain Ontario’s vision for a healthy, ecological, equitable and financially viable food system?