Beyond the IPCC for Food: An Overarching Framework for Food Systems Sustainability Assessment

Abstract

Food systems are responsible for a large share of anthropogenic impacts. In recent debates, the need to strengthen the link between science and policy has emerged with the proposal to establish a new global science–policy interface for a sustainable food system. While the clash between those who consider necessary and those who do not consider necessary the creation of this panel increases, this paper takes inspiration from this debate to highlight how strengthening the interactions between science and policy should be supported by increasing the informativeness of current sustainability assessments, regardless of the need for such a panel. In particular, we delve into this emerging topic by focusing on some critical aspects of the current sustainability assessments of food systems, which include the need for more comprehensive assessments, based on the joint use of multiple indicators. While sustainability assessments of food systems have been historically focusing on just one–two externalities at a time, the introduction of new multi-faceted indicators make it now possible to look at multiple externalities concurrently and at the trade-offs among them. Dietary contextualization becomes essential too, to avoid the provision of misleading information. An operative framework to improve sustainability assessments of food systems is presented here and discussed with the aim of promoting more informative approaches, which are crucial for transforming scientific knowledge into mitigation policies.