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

Figure 5 Environmental change, food system, and food security outcome components and dynamics:highlighting concentration of issues and pathways addressed by assessments (reproduced from Woodet al., 2010 with permission).The food system concept provided a ‘checklist’ to help structure this analysis, revealing thatassessments have “fallen short, sometimes significantly, of providing comprehensive andbalanced evidence on the range and interdependence of environmental change phenomenaand on the consequences of change on the many facets of food systems and security” (Woodet al., 2010).ConclusionsUnderstanding the interactions between food security and global environmental change ishighly challenging. This is nevertheless increasingly important as 50% more food will beneeded by 2030 (Godfray et al., 2010b) and there are concerns that the risk of food insecuritywill likely grow. These concerns are compounded by the simultaneous need to reducenegative environmental feedbacks from the ways we meet these demands. A furtherchallenge therefore is developing food system adaptation pathways that are significantlymore environmentally benign than current approaches. Adapting our food system activities tomeet these challenges will give rise to changes in all food security outcomes to some extent(Figure 1) but often researchers only consider one food security element, usually foodproduction. A meaningful adaptation discussion on food security needs consideration of howany intervention will affect all other eight elements of the food security outcomes; inprinciple, any intervention, even if only targeted at only one element will affect all nine.50