Table Of ContentRiccardo Valentini · John L. Sievenpiper
Marta Antonelli · Katarzyna Dembska
Editors
Achieving the
Sustainable
Development Goals
Through Sustainable
Food Systems
Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals
Through Sustainable Food Systems
Riccardo Valentini • John L. Sievenpiper
Marta Antonelli • Katarzyna Dembska
Editors
Achieving the Sustainable
Development Goals Through
Sustainable Food Systems
Editors
Riccardo Valentini John L. Sievenpiper
Department for Innovation on Biological Faculty of Medicine
Agro-Food and Forest Systems Department of Nutritional Sciences
University of Tuscia University of Toronto
Viterbo, Italy Toronto, ON, Canada
Division on Impacts on Agriculture Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism
Forests and Ecosystem Services (IAFES) Department of Medicine
Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate St. Michael’s Hospital
Change (CMCC) Toronto, ON, Canada
Viterbo, Italy
Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute
RUDN University, Moscow St. Michael’s Hospital
Head of Smart Urban Toronto, ON, Canada
Nature Laboratory
Moscow, Russia Katarzyna Dembska
Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition
Marta Antonelli Parma, Italy
Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition
Parma, Italy
Foundation Euro-Mediterranean Center on
Climate Change
Lecce, Italy
ISBN 978-3-030-23968-8 ISBN 978-3-030-23969-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23969-5
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To present and future generations.
Everyone can contribute to build a more
sustainable world.
Foreword
The food system stands today at crossroads.
It is an integral component of the biological, social, economic, cultural, and envi-
ronmental systems in which we live and operate but is currently faced with major
challenges that include climate change, depletion of water, soil degradation, biodi-
versity loss, deforestation, ecosystem stress, as well as nutrition challenges in terms
of hunger, micronutrient deficiencies, and obesity.
The environmental crisis is destabilizing the food systems, while agriculture, in
turn, contributes to environmental degradation. This is a vicious circle that needs to
be broken in order to implement sustainable development by ending poverty and
achieving economic prosperity, social justice, and environmental sustainability.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted at the United Nations
Sustainable Development Summit on 25 September 2015 critically depends on the
transformation of agriculture and the food system. We need a food system that pro-
duces healthy foods for all, that protects rather than degrades the planet, and that is
resilient to the environmental stresses, especially climate-related stresses that lie
ahead. Sustainable agri-food systems are critical to achieving all dimensions of sus-
tainable development.
Real solutions and good practices exist at all governance levels—local, national,
and international—as well as across the many stakeholders of the agri-food system,
including local smallholder farm communities, major food traders, and world’s
large food and agricultural companies responsible for a remarkable share of the
global trade and preparation of foods for commercial sale. We need an agri-food
system that is sustainable across the supply chains from the upstream producers to
the downstream consumers of food, that is, all of humanity!
This is at the core of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions
Network and the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition Foundation collaboration to
champion the development of a roadmap that prompts the world leaders and food
businesses to chart a decisive course to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development.
Against this context, this book is a compelling journey across the multifaceted
agri-food system challenges, opportunities, and risks that present generations need
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viii Foreword
to address and tackle in order to build a future of well-being, peace, and prosperity
for all people in the world.
The analyses offered here are primarily directed toward researchers, technical
practitioners, and business operators in the food, agriculture, and nutrition areas.
They also target public institutions and decision-makers who are responsible for
integrating the goals and the targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
into national planning, policies, and programs. The studies provide up-to-date,
cutting- edge, and comprehensive syntheses of the many challenges facing all
aspects of the global agri-food system. We are deeply grateful to the authors and
editors for such stellar and in-depth contributions.
Above all, this book is a call for greater multi-stakeholder commitment, collabo-
ration, and partnerships, between public and private entities, on one of the great
challenges of our time. This global cooperation, based on rigorous science and
shared moral values, will be vital to achieving the 2030 Agenda, the 17 Sustainable
Development Goals, and the Paris Climate Agreement and thereby creating “the
future we want.”
United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network Jeffrey Sachs
and Columbia University, New York
Sustainable Development Solutions Network Mediterranean Angelo Riccaboni
University of Siena, Siena, Italy
Preface
The food system is becoming a central nexus with our future, encompassing a broad
range of societal challenges, from food security, nutrition, and social and economic
inequalities to climate change, biodiversity, and land and ocean ecosystem services.
In order to guarantee the future of human kind, food systems have to meet the needs
of a growing and increasingly urbanized population while avoiding harm on the
environment. At present, food production is falling short of meeting nutritional
requirements and guaranteeing long-term health for almost one third of people
worldwide. Agriculture and food production account for a very substantial share of
climate-altering emissions and are intensely consuming water and land.
The 17 SDGs of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDGs) adopted
by the world leaders in September 2015 at the UN Sustainable Development Summit
have food at their very core. This is a first major argument made in this book aimed
to reach researchers, policy-makers, businessmen, and practitioners in all sectors
crosscut by food. The SDGs provide a framework to mobilize efforts toward sus-
tainable development, reducing poverty and inequalities, fostering economic
growth, and at the same time addressing climate change issues and environmental
conservation. This implies urgent and far-reaching changes in the way we produce
and consume food.
The COP21, held in Paris in 2015, became the first conference to establish a
concrete, long-term plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to involve not
only the most advanced countries but also the developing countries. For the first
time in 20 years of negotiations in the United Nations, a legally binding, universal
agreement on the climate was signed, with the ambitious goal of keeping global
warming below 2°C and, in longer term, below 1.5°. The IPCC report released in
October 2018 clearly showed that we need to stay well below 1.5°C for dramatic
impacts on ecosystems, health, and economic growth associated with this rise in
temperature to be avoided.
The SDGs and the Paris Agreement call for responsibility by all the actors in the
food system, from farm to fork. The construction of sustainable food systems
requires the prompt engagement of all stakeholders: from the citizens, called upon
to choose a healthy and sustainable diet, to the farmers, who can combine ancient
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traditions and technological innovation to reduce the impact of agriculture; from the
private sector, to invest in the development of a truly sustainable food offers, to
scientists, called to fill in data gaps, to institutions and policy-makers, who can place
the protection of natural resources and environment at the top of their agenda, also
through incentives. Public-private partnerships become capitalize on the relative
strengths and address the sustainability issue, which can be achieved through
cooperation.
We can see a number of initiatives and project that have the potential to put
forward the transformation of food systems. For example, a growing number of
national food-based dietary guidelines are advocating environmentally friendly
diets. The Netherlands recommends limiting the servings of meat to twice per week,
the United States includes a vegetarian diet as one of their three recommended
dietary patterns, while China advocates cutting meat consumption by 50%. Canada
has released the most updated food guide in 2019, underlining that food choices can
have an impact on the environment and recommending choosing protein foods that
come from plants more often. Cities are taking the lead in catalyzing climate action,
as the experience of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, gathering 199 cities over the
world to mobilize change in urban food systems.
The engagement of individuals is fundamental to achieve this kind of change.
This happens only if the individual citizen internalizes what a sustainable food
system can look like. Education thus is fundamental in building “sustainability
literacy” defined as the knowledge, skills, and mind-sets that allow individuals to
become deeply committed in building a sustainable future and assisting in making
informed and effective decisions to this end. This education has to put forward a
new mind-set, from linear to circular.
The book makes the effort of compassing the immensity of challenges and
changes that the global food system of the twenty-first century will have to undergo,
going from the involvement of youth to the role of artificial intelligence and from
climate change mitigation and agroecology to the role of advocacy and activism,
investments, and migration policies. We do not have the pretension of exhaustive-
ness, but we can argue that there is enough data today to compel us to take action.
The book is divided in two parts: the first summarizes the key issues regarding
food systems; the second identifies a new collaborative approach for solutions that
can re-establish the balance between human health and the planet. Sustainability,
especially when it concerns food, is trans-disciplinary. It intersects disciplines such
as ecology, geography, nutrition, medicine, economics, philosophy, and behavioral
sciences, and this book is the result of the different perspectives over the issues
faced by the food system in the hope to inspire new visions to progress in a sustain-
able development pathway.
Viterbo, Italy Riccardo Valentini
Toronto, ON, Canada John L. Sievenpiper
Parma, Italy Marta Antonelli
Parma, Italy Katarzyna Dembska
Acknowledgments
This book has been possible with the support and encouragement of special people
we would like to thank: Anna Ruggerini and the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition
for strongly believing in the project, Professor Stefano Zamagni for the valuable
inputs during the review process, Dr. Pin-Jane Nora Chen for the priceless patience
and professionality to assemble this volume, and Logos for their assistance.
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