Evaluating agricultural trade-offs in the age of sustainable development

A vibrant, resilient and productive agricultural sector is fundamental to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Bringing about such a transformation requires optimizing a range of agronomic, environmental and socioeconomic outcomes from agricultural systems – from crop yields, to biodiversity, to human nutrition. However, these outcomes are not independent of each other – they interact in both positive and negative ways, creating the potential for synergies and trade-offs. Consequently, transforming the agricultural sector for the age of sustainable development requires tracking these interactions, assessing if objectives are being achieved and allowing for adaptive management within the diverse agricultural systems that make up global agriculture. This paper reviews the field of agricultural trade-off analysis, which has emerged to better understand these interactions – from field to farm, region to continent. Taking a “cradle-to-grave” approach, we distill agricultural trade-off analysis into four steps: 1) characterizing the decision setting and identifying the context-specific indicators needed to assess agricultural sustainability, 2) selecting the methods for generating indicator values across different scales, 3) deciding on the means of evaluating and communicating the trade-off options with stakeholders and decision-makers, and 4) improving uptake of trade-off analysis outputs by decision-makers. Given the breadth of the Sustainable Development Goals and the importance of agriculture to many of them, we assess notions of human well-being beyond income or direct health concerns (e.g. related to gender, equality, nutrition), as well as diverse environmental indicators ranging from soil health to biodiversity to climate forcing. Looking forward, areas of future work include integrating the four steps into a single modeling platform and connecting tools across scales and disciplines to facilitate trade-off analysis. Likewise, enhancing the policy relevance of agricultural trade-off analysis requires improving scientist-stakeholder engagement in the research process. Only then can this field proactively address trade-off issues that are integral to sustainably intensifying local and global agriculture – a critical step toward successfully implementing the Sustainable Development Goals

Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals still neglecting their environmental roots in the Anthropocene

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs; promulgated in 2015), officially known as "Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development", are an intergovernmental set of 17 goals and 169 constituent targets that succeed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs; 2000-2015). Despite a clear mandate to integrate social, economic and environmental objectives in the SDGs, ecosystem health remains underrepresented in this latest iteration of the United Nation's global development agenda. We submit that maintaining ecosystem health (Goal 14: life below water and Goal 15: life on land) is a necessary precondition to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Here, we present a reconceptualized SDG framework akin to a tree that places Healthy Ecosystems as the roots for five branches of development (Clean Energy, Water Security, Food Security, Lives and Livelihoods, Governing for Sustainability). As universal examples, we put forward the vital role of life below fresh water for ending poverty by 2030 (Goal 1: no poverty) and describe how children's environmental health is the foundation for the major health priorities of reproductive, maternal and child health (Goal 3: good health and well-being). This framework provides insight and evidence for policymakers and the public to be cognizant that prioritizing ecosystem health goals can serve human development objectives which we deem as key to realizing the unified plan of action for people, planet and prosperity

Agricultural ecosystems and their services : the vanguard of sustainability?.

Peer Revie

Konsumenters attityd gentemot etisk produktion: En studie om ägg : En undersökning om hur etisk produktion påverkar konsumenters attityd och betalningsvillighet

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur etisk produktion påverkar konsumenters attityd gentemot en ökad investering vid konsumtion. Vedertagen teori menar på att etisk produktion har en positiv påverkan på den genomsnittlige konsumentens attityd och att konsumenter kan tänka sig att betala ett högre pris för produkter producerade på etiskt vis. Med syfte att konkretisera begreppet CSR och underlätta för respondenterna i enkätundersökningen används begreppet etisk produktion med hänvisning till äggkonsumtion. Aspekterna av begreppet etisk produktion som ligger till grund för denna studie är miljövänlig transport och god hönshållning. Studiens resultat redogör för att konsumenter är positivt inställda till att betala ett högre pris för produkter producerade på ett etiskt vis och att etisk produktion är ett produktattribut som påverkar konsumenternas attityd gentemot konsumtion

Systems thinking: an approach for understanding ‘eco-agri-food systems’

Chapter 2 makes the case for using systems thinking as a guiding perspective for TEEBAgriFood’s development of a comprehensive Evaluation Framework for the eco-agri-food system. Many dimensions of the eco-agri-food system create complex analytical and policy challenges. Systems thinking allows better understanding and forecasting the outcomes of policy decisions by illuminating how the components of a system are interconnected with one another and how the drivers of change are determined and impacted by feedback loops, delays and non-linear relationships. To establish the building blocks of a theory of change, systems thinking empowers us to move beyond technical analysis and decision- tool toward more integrated approaches that can aid in the forming of a common ground for cultural changes