Desvio, problematização e solidariedade como atributos de criação de lugares sustentáveis

This paper aims to progress a conceptual and analytical view to the appreciation and connectivity of spaces, places and nature in reconceptualising and progressing sustainability transitions. We look at the interrelationships between the distinct approaches of deviant mainstreaming of socially innovative practices, problematisation through innovative translation, and anchoring sustainable translations through solidarity assemblages. These three dimensions allow us to develop a neo-Callonist perspective for sustainable placemaking and translation in sustainability science. We refer to some empirical experiences to appreciate these interrelationships that contribute to new realities and create new spaces and places of innovation.Este artículo pretende avanzar en una visión conceptual y analítica de la valoración y la conectividad de los espacios, los lugares y la naturaleza en la reconceptualización y el progreso de las transiciones hacia la sostenibilidad. Se examinan las interrelaciones entre los distintos enfoques de la integración desviada de las prácticas socialmente innovadoras, la problematización a través de la traducción innovadora y el anclaje de las traducciones sostenibles a través de los ensamblajes solidarios. Estas tres dimensiones nos permiten desarrollar una perspectiva neocallista para la creación de lugares sostenibles y la traducción en la ciencia de la sostenibilidad. Nos referimos a algunas experiencias empíricas para apreciar estas interrelaciones que contribuyen a nuevas realidades y crean nuevos espacios y lugares de innovación.Este documento tem como objetivo avançar uma visão conceptual e analítica da apreciação e conectividade dos espaços, lugares e natureza na reconceitualização e progresso das transições de sustentabilidade. Analisamos as inter-relações entre as abordagens distintas de integração de práticas socialmente inovadoras, problematização através de traduções inovadoras, e ancoragem de traduções sustentáveis através de assembleias solidárias. Estas três dimensões permitem-nos desenvolver uma perspectiva neocallonista para a construção de um lugar e tradução sustentáveis na ciência da sustentabilidade. Referimo-nos a algumas experiências empíricas para apreciar estas inter-relações que contribuem para novas realidades e criam novos espaços e lugares de inovação

A food Brexit: time to get real

The implications of Brexit for food are potentially enormous. This verdict applies, whether there is a ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ Brexit. The UK food system, consumer tastes and prices have been thoroughly Europeanised. This will be impossible to cut out or back by March 2019 without enormous consequences. The UK food system faces real challenges on food security. This paper summarises 15 major issues on which Food Brexit has the potential to threaten UK food resilience and security: 1. Vision. What goals would any new post-EU food system have? Will these address the looming sustainability challenge which is a mix of ecosystems, social and public health challenges? 2. New food legislation will be needed. Will this be a transfer of EU legislation followed by the Secretary of State sitting with his or her 'delete’ button? 3. Food security. The UK’s home production has been steadily declining. The UK food system ought to be improving its resilience. It isn’t. It’s like the rabbit caught in the headlights – with no goals, no leadership, and eviscerated key ministries. 4. Sourcing. The UK derives much of the food vital for health – fruit and veg – from within the EU. The pound sterling has been dropping. Food price inflation is rising. 5. Public support. Clarifying and then aligning what British consumers say they want with what is negotiated by March 2019. 6. Food quality and standards. Brexit campaigners ignored the inbuilt reliance the UK has on pan-European institutions, to which we contribute. A vast array of institutions and scientific infrastructure keeps UK food fit to eat. Brexit campaigners did not inform consumers/voters that US agribusiness is salivating at the prospect of selling foods which have weaker standards, nor that foods derived on world markets use standards which are weaker than the EU’s and those of the USA. 7. Replacing the Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy. The CAP and CFP are core and old EU policies. They have been much attacked in the UK, often for good reason. Leaving CAP and the CFP exposes a vast policy vacuum. The new Secretary of State has made a statement about even tearing up the CFP predecessor the London Fisheries Convention from 1964! The Coalition and subsequent Conservative Governments provided no policy vision other than a belief that Agri-technology and an export drive will suffice for farming, and that reasserting a 200-mile exclusion will resolve unsustainable fish sourcing. They will not. What’s the point of farming and fishing? How can they mix food production and ecosystems services? These are vital issues for the era of climate change and ecosystem stresses. 8. Food labour. The entire UK food system is dependent on migrant labour. UK food manufacturing is our largest manufacturing sector but one third of its workforce is migrant. UK horticulture has massive dependency on migrants to pick ‘British’ food UK consumers say they want. Technology will not replace the vast army of migrant labour who work in food service. 9. Subsidies. HM Treasury and Defra have long been ideologically opposed to subsidies for farmers yet CAP/EU subsidies provide about half of UK farm incomes. The Conservative manifesto talked of maintaining subsidies until 2022. Then what? Defra and HM Treasury are committed to cutting ‘Pillar 1’, implying that if there are to be any subsidies, the base line for them would be the existing 20% that goes to Pillar 2. The subsidy question exposes the shameful inequalities within the UK food system. Primary growers get a tiny percentage of what consumers spend on food. 10. National and regional food policy. The UK has no food policy. Scotland and Wales have been developing their own visions; England is the problem. Seen collectively, the UK will have a dwindling mishmash of policies, once EU frameworks are removed. The UK has fairly consistently failed to contribute positively in EU debates, playing to the corporate gallery at home, arguing for cutting subsidies, rather than working hard inside for progressive policies. The world’s food system faces immense challenges. The drift in and after a Brexit is the worst policy situation imaginable. We have options. This paper explores some options mooted within and beyond government circles: a new imperialism (expecting others to feed us); reinvigorating UK food systems; commitment to sustainability; and more. 11. Relationships with neighbours. The wild talk before, during and since the Referendum ignores geography. The EU 27 member states are our neighbours. They are incredulous at the hostile, stupid talk from leading politicians. British negotiators must build bridges. Or does the UK really want hostility? This would be madness for a country which does not feed itself. 12. Divided Food Britain. The UK is a food divided country. The health gap between rich and poor is heavily associated with diet and food costs. Recent events underline how important it is to tackle these divisions. Merely promising ever cheaper prices or more food banks is not a reasoned policy response. 13. Institutions and infrastructure. The UK enters Brexit negotiations in a weak situation. The Food Standards Agency is a shadow of its former self. Defra has had years of cuts and suffers a serious staff shortage, just when the UK needs many of the best and brightest civil servants to negotiate the most important element of Europeanisation – our food. To leave the EU would sever the UK from many bodies which underpin food – from scientific advisory bodies to regulators, from research programmes to subsidies to regions. What is going to replace these? There is silence from Defra and the Government. 14. The negotiations. In 18 months or so, the most complex reconfiguration of the UK food system is to be completed. Analysts now realise that this is at best folly or at worst a recipe for chaos. Never has there been such a large body of thinking within the food system, from outside critics to inside track policy cognoscenti, that the UK ought to take a deep breath, reconsider and pursue a well-thought-out strategy. 15. The role of Big Food. The food system is already dominated by huge food companies. Brexit must not be an opportunity for further corporate capture of market power. The good news is that increasing numbers of food companies now recognise the seriousness of impending crises from health, ecosystems and social divisions. The UK public must ensure that what emerges ahead – whether the UK leaves or stays – the food system is more firmly shaped by values of justice and decency, as well as good quality. The realities of a Food Brexit are awesome. The British public has not been informed about its implications. Many people who voted for Brexit will be hardest hit by a ‘hard’ Brexit – people on low incomes, the elderly, farmers, people in the North of England. This paper urges politicians, civil society and academics who understand the food system to speak up and speak out. Brexit is a political construct. It should not be a recipe for food insecurity

Exploring the rural eco-economy: beyond neoliberalism

Rural areas become central sites for the development of the post-carbon transition, yet this is a highly contested and contingent process whereby neo-liberal models of development and framings compete with the emergence of the alternative circular eco-economy. The article argues for a grounded conceptual and empirical approach in tracing this overall process of sustainable place-making. It explores three key highly contested dimensions: reflexive governance, distributed eco-economies, and re-financialisation, arguing that such explorations are critical in developing more sustainable rural-urban functionalities for the necessary post- carbon and post-neoliberal transition

Exploring European food system vulnerabilities: Towards integrated food security governance

Studies on vulnerabilities and drivers of change in the food system have largely failed to address holistic but also the competing interpretations of “food security”. In general, they tend to focus on specific sectors and dimensions of the food system as well as on outcomes, rather than unpacking root causes of vulnerability. To contribute to overcoming these limitations, a Delphi survey with 45 European experts on food security was conducted to identify the main drivers of change, threats and weaknesses of the EU food system and to uncover their root causes. Linking empirical data with theoretical discussions on vulnerability and governance, we identify five food system governance deficiencies that impinge upon food security in Europe: a failure to deal with cross-scale dynamics; the inability to address issues related to persistent inequalities in food rights and entitlements; increasing geopolitical and sectorial interdependencies; power imbalances and low institutional capacities; and conflicting values and interpretations of “food security”. These five dimensions, we conclude, need to be addressed in an integrated fashion to progress the current polarised academic and policy debates and begin to build a more democratic, sustainable and secure European food syste

Relationalities and convergences in food security narratives: towards a place based approach

This paper addresses emerging calls for an enhanced relationality and convergence across different food security discourses. Based on a critical analysis of different narratives and concepts that have, over time, been deployed to address the food security problem, this paper asks: How, and to what extent, can the different narratives on food security and their different postulates be integrated to create a context that fosters closer connections between food system activities and more empowered relations between its actors? To address this question, the paper focuses on the governance frameworks embedded in different narratives on food security – i.e. the role attributed to different food system actors, their diverse views of rights and responsibility, and the types of interactions that are prioritised to achieve collective goals. The analysis exposes the limitations of conceptual frameworks as diverse as productivism, food sovereignty, livelihood security, the right-to-food, food democracy, food citizenship and community food security, which, we argue, tend to be locked into fixed levels of scale and generalised as well as oppositional assumptions. As the paper concludes, efforts to refine the food security agenda should start with a recognition of place as key and active meso-level mediator – that is, as a progressive canvass for reassembling resources around more effective food production–consumption relations and as a multiscalar theoretical lens that offers the conceptual advantage of building far more complexity and diversity into aggregated food security debates

Unfolding sustainability transitions in food systems: insights from UK and French trajectories.

While the negative environmental, social and health impacts of the current food system have been acknowledged and evidenced for several decades, the recent and current transformations in food systems at diverse scales are not yet addressing the many inter-related stakes at play. Due to the much wider set of interactions in this consumption-production system, new conceptual tools are required for understanding and assessing sustainability transitions and what prevents them. The article will draw on the cases of France and the UK to examine these countries’ national food systems’ historical trajectories and suggest a periodization of these in order to reveal common characteristics and differences. This will show that despite common major trends and common transition or inertia mechanisms, pathways differ, especially from the 1990s, due to different configurations of power relationships between the state, economic actors and civil society in a context of an increasing competition between sustainability narratives that leads to an increasing fragmentation in food systems. It will lead us to join the recent progress in the sustainability transitions’ community towards a shift in the analysis from a focus on niches’ trajectories and effects to a deeper focus on power configurations and competing narratives, as well as to suggest a larger inclusion of socio-ecological and spatial dimensions

Deviance, problematisation and solidarity as attributes of sustainable place-making

This paper aims to progress a conceptual and analytical view to the appreciation and connectivity of spaces, places and nature in reconceptualising and progressing sustainability transitions. We look at the interrelationships between the distinct approaches of deviant mainstreaming of socially innovative practices, problematisation through innovative translation, and anchoring sustainable translations through solidarity assemblages. These three dimensions allow us to develop a neo-Callonist perspective for sustainable place-making and translation in sustainability science. We refer to some empirical experiences to appreciate these interrelationships that contribute to new realities and create new spaces and places of innovation

After COP21: contested transformations in the energy / agri-food nexus

To what extent are we witnessing real transformatory change towards a low- or zero-carbon economy following the optimism surrounding the COP21 Paris agreements? Taking the energy/agri-food nexus as a major focus, the paper examines what it regards as highly contested co-evolutionary trends associated both with carbonised and geo-politically motivated ‘lock-in’ on the one hand, but nevertheless, the rise of significant post-carbon strategies and practices on the other. The latter may be significantly encouraged by the rise of what are termed as ‘stranded assets’ and disinvestments in the financial investment sector, and the opportunities for more distributed systems of production in the energy/agri-food nexus. These shifts suggest a more polyvalent set of post-carbonised capitalist and post-capitalist processes which demand a renewed political- ecological approach by scholars in understanding these multiple resources and transformatory processes. Overall, this would suggest that the transformations before us will not assume a ‘business as usual’ model of conventional (and concentrated) capitalist development

The Food Standards Agency: making a difference?

The governance of food in Britain has been in a state of flux in recent years. For over a decade, from the mid 1980s to the late 1990s, the then Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) found itself mired in a series of food controversies. Eventually, partly overwhelmed by its inability to reassure consumers or the food industry on the safety of food in Britain the Ministry was replaced by the Food Standards Agency (FSA). In this paper, we briefly review the background to the formation of the FSA and its formal role. We then describe how the creation of the FSA has changed the interrelationships between organisations and how these patterns have shifted the nature of food governance in Britain. To analyse the changing nature of food governance two models are outlined; one coercive and the other partnership based. An assessment of the extent to which the FSA works with one or other of these models is then made by exploring how key FSAs activities, especially its approach to enforcement, are shaping its relationships with other organisations and its policy outcomes. The paper draws heavily on material made available by the FSA through its website and a set of key person interviews with those with an interest along the whole food supply chain

The political ecology of food: Carving 'spaces of possibility' in a new research agenda

In times of austerity and global environmental change, recent crises related to food (in)securities and (un)sustainabilities urge us to reposition agri-food research. We argue that there is an opportunity to develop a more critical food scholarship by explicitly integrating political ecology approaches. For this purpose, the paper outlines major elements in the extensive political ecology scholarship to guide a critical review of some central trends in food research, as well as considering the contribution to date of food studies to political ecology perspectives. This exercise allows us to identify key avenues of convergence between food studies and political ecology frameworks that constitute three conceptual building blocks of a revised critical food scholarship: understanding place-based socio-natures; addressing the politics of scale and inequality; and co-producing knowledge and change. These coordinates are used to analyse two emergent potential spaces of possibility, embodied in the emergence of cities as food policy actors and the rise of the Food Sovereignty movement. We conclude by exploring how a critical food scholarship could inform an inclusive reframing to produce the grounds of possibility for a more socially and ecologically diverse food system