Food Systems

The flagship of the Earth System Governance Project on food systems will be analyzed through collaboration with the Global Environmental Change and Food Systems (GECAFS) project, one of the joint projects of the Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP). The goal of GECAFS is to determine strategies to cope with the impacts of global environmental change on food systems and to assess the environmental and socioeconomic consequences of adaptive responses aimed at improving food security. The GECAFS research agenda is specifically targeted towards delivering the new science necessary to underpin policy formulation for improving food security in the face of global environmental change. So far GECAFS has set out to:

(a) investigate how global environmental change affects food security at regional scale;

(b) determine options to adapt regional food systems to cope with both global environmental change and changing demands for food;

(c) assess how potential adaptation options will affect the environment, societies and economies; and

(d) engage the international global environmental change and development communities in policy discussions to improve food security.

There are strong institutional and governance questions underpinning GECAFS analysis of food systems. These include (a) the extent to which concerns about food systems are incorporated into global and regional environmental governance, for example into the adaptation or mitigation strand of the climate convention process or in environmental components of regional trade agreements; (b) the ways in which the governance of the food system affects the earth system, for instance how the shifts to long global supply chains controlled by large private firms affect climate and land use; and (c) the inadvertent impacts of earth system governance on food systems, for instance the interaction between biofuels, energy efficiency or carbon sequestration projects and food security. In many ways, earth system governance is integral to the GECAFS agenda, and the Earth System Governance Project provides an excellent opportunity to expand and strengthen understanding of food systems and security in the face of environmental change.