Sustainable development, Agenda 2030 and food security in historical perspective

Abstract

The sustainable development (SD) concept has won substantial popularity in recent decades. At the same time, neoliberalism (the socio-economic orthodoxy since the mid-1970s) is somewhat put in the shade. The paper attempts to find out whether the SD paradigm and its recent incarnation (Agenda 2030) constitutes a decisive break from the mainstream. The second aim is to assess whether the concept of food security is adequately addressed by the Agenda 2030. The study shows that Agenda 2030, with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, is a much broader concept than preceding MDGs, but it still cannot guarantee the attainment of food security both in the short-term (the risk of commodity price bubbles) and in the longer-term (i.e. till 2030) due to the prevalence of extreme poverty, high-income inequality, structural weakness of many developing countries and inadequate global regulation.