From Food Production to Food Security - Global Environmental ...

Paper 3: A Food Systems Approach to Researching Food Security and its Interactionswith Global Environmental ChangeThis paper lays out the food system concept differentiating clearly between food systemActivities and food security Outcomes. It includes a number of examples of when, how andwhy a food system approach helps in understanding and framing food (in)security research.Examples include (i) analysing the vulnerability of food systems to GEC and identifying foodsystem adaptation options; (ii) analysing the consequences of interventions on food securityoutcomes; (iii) food system concepts for framing scenarios analyses; (iv) quantifying thecontribution of food system activities to crossing ‘planetary boundaries’; and (v) analysingthe food security dimension in international environmental assessments.Part III comprises a further three papers and makes the case for regional-level research andbroad stakeholder engagement:Paper 4: Why regions?This paper introduces Part III by discussing why the regional level is important for foodsystems and food security/GEC research. It argues for moving research from local toregional, highlights the range of cross-scale and cross-level interactions that determine foodsecurity and gives some example of “scale challenges”.Paper 5: Engaging stakeholders at the regional levelThis paper identifies who the stakeholders are in the GEC-food security debate, and therebywho needs to be involved in setting the GEC-food security agenda. It discusses when toengage stakeholders in research planning and how, and identifies elements of good practice instakeholder engagement. It also discusses different types of interactions with stakeholders soas to enhance decision support for food security and how to assess the effectiveness of suchengagement.Paper 6: Undertaking research at the regional levelThis final paper brings together the previous papers by ‘translating’ theory into practice at theregional level. It starts by discussing how to identifying the ‘client’ at this spatial level. Itthen describes how to encourage regional research networks and the importance of teambuilding and adopting standardized methods. It concludes by laying out some methodologicalchallenges for food systems research at the regional level including funding issues and how toestablish institutional buy-in.Building on this set of published work, Part IV (Reflections and Conclusion) explains whythe thesis title and thesis questions are appropriate, and how the papers address the questions.10