The Role of Knowledge in Food Democracy

If food democracy is about who gets to determine the food that we eat and the character of the underlying food system, then we must examine not only who gets to make decisions that impact on food but also on what evidence, or knowledge, these decisions are made. This article argues that widening the democratic scope of knowledge on which our decisions on food are based is an essential component of food democracy. Food democracies do not just call for citizens to be knowledgeable about the food system but for all stakeholders to actively contribute to the holistic understanding of the food system. Four dimensions of knowledge democracy are set out: The co-production of knowledge with stakeholders; harnessing non-cognitive knowledge represented in arts and culture; knowledge as a tool for action; and the open access and sharing of knowledge. This framework is then used to explore how knowledge is currently already produced and used in a way that enhances food democracy, including through Participatory Action Research with peasant farmers, using the arts to create a ‘contemplative commons’ about food and the unique dialogue process through which the social movement La Vía Campesina operates. Based on these, and other, examples the article concludes that universities, and other recognized centres of knowledge production, need to focus not only on creating new knowledge partnerships but also on finding spaces to challenge and shift accepted ways of knowing in order to better promote food democracy

Contexualising the tool development process through a knowledge brokering approach : the case of climate change adaptation and agriculture

This article applies a ‘knowledge brokering’ approach to contextualise the development of an integrated computer modelling tool into the real world policy context of adaptation of agriculture to climate change at the EU level. In particular, the article tests a number of knowledge brokering strategies described and theorised in the literature, but seldom empirically tested. The article finds that while the policy context can be used to identify a theoretically informed knowledge brokering strategy, in practice a strategy’s ‘success’ is more informed by practical considerations, such as whether the tool development process is knowledge or demand driven. In addition, in practice the knowledge brokering process is found to be dynamic and messy, which is not always apparent in the literature. The article goes on to question the perception that there is always a need (or a desire) to bridge the gap between researchers and policy makers in the tool development process. Rather than a problem of design and communication, the science policy interface may be characterised more by a high level of competition between researchers and research organisations to have their tool legitimised by its use in the policy making process.Linking Impact Assessment Instruments with Sustainability Expertise (LIAISE) Network of Excellence financed under the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (Project Number 243826).http://www.elsevier.com/locate/envsci2016-08-31hb201

The role of knowledge in food democracy

If food democracy is about who gets to determine the food that we eat and the character of the underlying food system, then we must examine not only who gets to make decisions that impact on food but also on what evidence, or knowledge, these decisions are made. This article argues that widening the democratic scope of knowledge on which our decisions on food are based is an essential component of food democracy. Food democracies do not just call for citizens to be knowledgeable about the food system but for all stakeholders to actively contribute to the holistic understanding of the food system. Four dimensions of knowledge democracy are set out: The co-production of knowledge with stakeholders; harnessing non-cognitive knowledge represented in arts and culture; knowledge as a tool for action; and the open access and sharing of knowledge. This framework is then used to explore how knowledge is currently already produced and used in a way that enhances food democracy, including through Participatory Action Research with peasant farmers, using the arts to create a ‘contemplative commons’ about food and the unique dialogue process through which the social movement La Vía Campesina operates. Based on these, and other, examples the article concludes that universities, and other recognized centres of knowledge production, need to focus not only on creating new knowledge partnerships but also on finding spaces to challenge and shift accepted ways of knowing in order to better promote food democracy.Centre of Excellence for Food Security, South Africahttps://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernancehj2020Political Science

Chapter 20 EU environmental policy at 50

The European Union (EU) has a hugely important effect on the way in which environmental policies are framed, designed and implemented in many parts of the world, but especially Europe. The new edition of this leading textbook provides a state-of-the-art analysis of the EU’s environmental policies. Comprising five parts, Environmental Policy in the EU covers the rapidly changing context in which EU environmental policies are made, the key actors who interact to co-produce them and the most salient dynamics of policy making, ranging from agenda setting and decision making, through to implementation and evaluation. Written by leading international experts, individual chapters examine how the EU is responding to a multitude of different challenges including biodiversity loss, climate change, energy insecurity, and water and air pollution. They tease out the different ways in which the EU’s policies on these topics co-evolve with national and international environmental policies. In this systematically updated fourth edition, a wider array of learning features are employed to ensure that readers fully understand how EU environmental policies have developed over the last fifty years and how they are currently adapting to the rapidly evolving challenges of the twenty-first century, including the COVID-19 pandemic. It is an essential resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying environmental policy and politics, climate change, environmental law and EU politics more broadly

Lockdown, resilience and emergency statecraft in the Cape Town food system

Well before the Covid-19 pandemic, rapidly growing cities of the global South were at the epicenter of multiple converging crises affecting food systems. Globally, government lockdown responses to the disease triggered shocks which cascaded unevenly through urban food systems, exacerbating food insecurity. Cities worldwide developed strategies to mitigate shocks, but research on statecraft enabling food systems resilience is sparse. Addressing this gap, we analyse the case of the African metropolis of Cape Town, where lockdown disrupted livelihoods, mobility and food provision, deepening food insecurity. Employing a vital systems security lens, we show how civil society and state networks mobilised to mitigate and adapt to lockdown impacts. Building on preceding institutional transformations, civil society and state collaborated to deliver emergency food aid, while advocacy networks raised food on the political agenda, formulated proposals, and navigated these through a widened policy window. Emergency statecraft assembled networks and regulatory instruments to secure food systems, enhance preparedness for future disruptions and present opportunities for transition towards more sustainable food systems. However, current food systems configuration enabled powerful actors to resist deeper transformation while devolving impacts to community networks. Despite resilient vested interests and power disparities, advocacy coalitions can anticipate and leverage crises to incrementally advance transformational, pro-poor statecraft

Policy coherence for development in the European Union : do new procedures unblock or simply reproduce old disagreements?

Policy coherence for development (PCD) — the integration of the needs of developing countries into all policy areas — is now an EU policy goal. This article focuses on how far this ambitious goal has been addressed in a policy procedure — impact assessment (IA) — established to support such cross-cutting goals. Drawing on an analysis of the 2006 and 2013 reforms of the EU’s sugar policy, it finds that while IA offered a new venue in which to debate PCD, in practice it reproduced the same disagreements that previously frustrated agricultural reform. The article shows how IA was shaped during its implementation, so instead of functioning as a bureaucratic procedure to pursue policy coherence, it simply buttressed the power of dominant groups. Advocates of policy coherence in general and PCD in particular should therefore be mindful that the toolbox of implementing instruments in the EU may be more limited than sometimes assumed.Linking Impact Assessment Instruments with Sustainability Expertise (LIAISE) Network of Excellence financed under the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (Project Number 243826). Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (F00204AR).http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/geui20hb201

Current practices and user expectations

IAISE Policy Brief No. 1 on "Impact Assessment Systems and Tools in Europe: Current Practices and User Expectations" has just been published. This policy brief presents the key findings on the most comprehensive survey yet conducted of user needs and expectations with regard to Impact Assessment (IA) systems and tools in 17 European countries. The survey was carried out by researchers from the LIAISE Network of Excellence, who collected data through documentary analysis and interviews with 130 people who steer IA at a strategic level, i.e. those people who champion, oversee, guide, audit or write guidance for IA processes. A more detailed description of the survey’s results can be found in the LIAISE Innovation Report No. 2 (January 2011)

Digital storytelling for policy impact: Perspectives from co-producing knowledge for food system governance in South Africa

Post-positivist critics of the linear-rational understanding of the role of knowledge in decision making have long argued the need for the construction of socially robust knowledge to illuminate policy problems from a variety of perspectives, including lived experiences. This article charts the attempts of researchers to employ a creative method, digital storytelling, alongside more traditional scientific data in stakeholder deliberations to inform local food governance in South Africa

Fostering communities of practice for improved food democracy : experiences and learning from South Africa

The highly concentrated formal agri-food sector holds enormous power in the governance of the food system in South Africa. Yet the concept of food democracy holds that all people should have an equal opportunity to participate in (re)shaping their food system. To contribute to decision making, however, stakeholders not only need access to knowledge about the food system, but should also be able to inform what is considered relevant knowledge. Communities of practice—groups of people who share a common interest or concern and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis—provide novel spaces for stakeholder involvement in food governance. This article sets out the process of establishing and maintaining a community of (food) practice in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Through participant observation, analysis of unpublished documents, as well as in depth interviews, the core elements of the community of practice are charted over its 3 yr history. The article demonstrates the informal and evolving nature of communities of practice as social learning structures that can gain credibility and potentially develop into more formal democratic institutions over.The DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security, South Africahttps://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/uar2hj2022Political Science