Harnessing the connectivity of climate change, food systems and diets: Taking action to improve human and planetary health

With climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and ongoing conflicts, food systems and the diets they produce are facing increasing fragility. In a turbulent, hot world, threatened resiliency and sustainability of food systems could make it all the more complicated to nourish a population of 9.7 billion by 2050. Climate change is having adverse impacts across food systems with more frequent and intense extreme events that will challenge food production, storage, and transport, potentially imperiling the global population’s ability to access and afford healthy diets. Inadequate diets will contribute further to detrimental human and planetary health impacts. At the same time, the way food is grown, processed, packaged, and transported is having adverse impacts on the environment and finite natural resources further accelerating climate change, tropical deforestation, and biodiversity loss. This state-of-the-science iterative review covers three areas. The paper’s first section presents how climate change is connected to food systems and how dietary trends and foods consumed worldwide impact human health, climate change, and environmental degradation. The second area articulates how food systems affect global dietary trends and the macro forces shaping food systems and diets. The last section highlights how specific food policies and actions related to dietary transitions can contribute to climate adaptation and miti­ gation responses and, at the same time, improve human and planetary health. While there is significant urgency in acting, it is also critical to move beyond the political inertia and bridge the separatism of food systems and climate change agendas that currently exists among governments and private sector actors. The window is closing and closing fast

The Food Systems Dashboard is a new tool to inform better food policy

The Food Systems Dashboard brings together extant data from public and private sources to help decision makers understand their food systems, identify their levers of change and decide which ones need to be pulled

The state of food systems worldwide in the countdown to 2030

This Analysis presents a recently developed food system indicator framework and holistic monitoring architecture to track food system transformation towards global development, health and sustainability goals. Five themes are considered: (1) diets, nutrition and health; (2) environment, natural resources and production; (3) livelihoods, poverty and equity; (4) governance; and (5) resilience. Each theme is divided into three to five indicator domains, and indicators were selected to reflect each domain through a consultative process. In total, 50 indicators were selected, with at least one indicator available for every domain. Harmonized data of these 50 indicators provide a baseline assessment of the world’s food systems. We show that every country can claim positive outcomes in some parts of food systems, but none are among the highest ranked across all domains. Furthermore, some indicators are independent of national income, and each highlights a specific aspiration for healthy, sustainable and just food systems. The Food Systems Countdown Initiative will track food systems annually to U. Rashid Sumaila, Maximo Torero Cullen, Francesco N. Tubiello, Jose-Luis Vivero-Pol, Patrick Webb & Keith Wieb

Adapting the Eat-Lancet Healthy Reference Diet to Cambodia: Understanding Dietary Intake, Perceptions of Environmental Challenges, and Environmental Impacts of Diets

Background: Global food systems are being called upon to deliver healthier and more sustainable diets. Few studies have explored shifts to a healthy and sustainable diet or evaluated dietary impacts on multiple environmental systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Objective: This study sought to develop a framework for adapting a global healthy and sustainable diet, the EAT-Lancet Healthy Reference Diet (HRD), to the context of Cambodia by exploring perceptions of the relevance of environmental challenges for the Cambodian food system, exploring current diets, and analyzing environmental footprints of Cambodian diets and of the HRD. Methods: In the absence of quantitative dietary data for Cambodia, this dissertation estimates daily individual intake based on data from FAO Food Balance Sheets (FBS) 2016-19, the Cambodia Living Standards Measurement Study Plus (LSMS) 2019-20, the Global Dietary Database (GDD) 2018, the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2019, and the Dietary Quality Questionnaire (DQQ) 2021. Average individual daily consumption and prevalence of food group consumption were calculated and compared to the HRD mean recommended intake and food group ranges. Semi-structured interviews with food system experts (n=15) were conducted to elicit perceptions of Cambodian food systems' environmental challenges. The planetary boundaries framework was used to rank which of the five environmental dimensions were perceived to be under most stress. To estimate the environmental impacts of diets, this study adapted the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Planet-Based Diets environmental impacts model for greenhouse gas emissions (GHGe), freshwater consumption, land use, and biodiversity loss. Three baseline daily intakes were used based on data from FBS, LSMS, and GDD. Environmental impacts intensities were calculated by food group and applied to baseline diets and the HRD. Impact of individual yearly diets were compared to food systems 2050 targets downscaled from the global to the individual level. Results: There is agreement across data sources on the low consumption of vegetables, fruit, legumes, nuts, and whole grains compared to the HRD recommendations. Results show animal-source food consumption is within HRD recommended ranges except for pork, with animal-source food estimated at 17 to 33 g/person/day compared to the recommended 0-14 g/person/day. Consumption of vegetable protein sources (beans, soy foods, nuts) is low, ranging from 5 to 31 g/person/day across data sources compared to a mean recommendation of 125 g/person/day. Environmental challenges across five environmental systems were described as impacting the Cambodian food system. Participants ranked climate change as the most concerning area, with freshwater systems and land use change tied as second and biodiversity loss as the third most concerning dimension. Participants perceived environmental challenges to have cascading adverse impacts across all areas of the food system. A dietary shift from baseline Cambodian diets to the HRD is associated with a 12.9-34.1% reduction in GHGe, 10.4-29.9% reduction in land use, 5.1-19% reduction in freshwater consumption, and a 0.3-20.1% reduction in biodiversity loss, depending on the data source used to estimate the baseline diet. Nonetheless, HRD footprint continue to surpass 2050 food system targets for GHGe and land use. Conclusions: This study emphasize the importance of environmental sustainability for Cambodian food systems and the potential for dietary changes to play a positive role in natural resource conservation. While Cambodian diets have low environmental impacts relative to other countries, the HRD offers a roadmap for further reducing the national food consumption footprint on four environmental systems. However, differences in estimated food intakes can lead to distinct interpretations of human and planetary health impacts of diets

Riverine food environments and food security: A case study of the Mekong River, Cambodia

Rivers are critical, but often overlooked, parts of food systems. They have multiple functions that support the food security, nutrition, health and livelihoods of the communities surrounding them. However, given current unsustainable food system practices, damming and climate change, the majority of the world's largest rivers are increasingly susceptible to environmental degradation, with negative implications for the communities that rely on them. Here we describe the dynamism and multifaceted nature of rivers as food environments (i.e. the place within food systems where people obtain their food) and their role in securing food security including improved diets and overall health. We also provide a conceptual framework that explain rivers as food environments within the broader food system and describe approaches to characterizing these food environments to better inform our understanding of how they influence food security and nutrition outcomes. Applying this framework to the Mekong River in Cambodia, we describe rivers as multifaceted wild food environments embedded within ecosystems, sociocultural and political environments and sectors of influence. We also explain the ways in which individual factors might influence how communities interact with this food environment. Developing and articulating food-related, ecosystem-specific frameworks and their constructs can guide implementation of policies aimed to improve specific public health or environmental sustainability outcomes. Our conceptual framework incorporates the multiple dimensions of rivers, which will aid future work and public health policy framing to better describe, understand and intervene to ensure protection of rivers' biodiversity and ecosystems as well as food security, health and livelihoods

The state of food systems worldwide in the countdown to 2030

This Analysis presents a recently developed food system indicator framework and holistic monitoring architecture to track food system transformation towards global development, health and sustainability goals. Five themes are considered: (1) diets, nutrition and health; (2) environment, natural resources and production; (3) livelihoods, poverty and equity; (4) governance; and (5) resilience. Each theme is divided into three to five indicator domains, and indicators were selected to reflect each domain through a consultative process. In total, 50 indicators were selected, with at least one indicator available for every domain. Harmonized data of these 50 indicators provide a baseline assessment of the world’s food systems. We show that every country can claim positive outcomes in some parts of food systems, but none are among the highest ranked across all domains. Furthermore, some indicators are independent of