scholarly journals Recognize fish as food in policy discourse and development funding

AMBIO ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abigail Bennett ◽  
Xavier Basurto ◽  
John Virdin ◽  
Xinyan Lin ◽  
Samantha J. Betances ◽  
...  

AbstractThe international development community is off-track from meeting targets for alleviating global malnutrition. Meanwhile, there is growing consensus across scientific disciplines that fish plays a crucial role in food and nutrition security. However, this ‘fish as food’ perspective has yet to translate into policy and development funding priorities. We argue that the traditional framing of fish as a natural resource emphasizes economic development and biodiversity conservation objectives, whereas situating fish within a food systems perspective can lead to innovative policies and investments that promote nutrition-sensitive and socially equitable capture fisheries and aquaculture. This paper highlights four pillars of research needs and policy directions toward this end. Ultimately, recognizing and working to enhance the role of fish in alleviating hunger and malnutrition can provide an additional long-term development incentive, beyond revenue generation and biodiversity conservation, for governments, international development organizations, and society more broadly to invest in the sustainability of capture fisheries and aquaculture.

Agronomy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 991
Author(s):  
Ana Maria Figueira Gomes ◽  
David Draper ◽  
Nascimento Nhantumbo ◽  
Rafael Massinga ◽  
José C. Ramalho ◽  
...  

Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) is a neglected crop native to Africa, with an outstanding potential to contribute to the major challenges in food and nutrition security, as well as in agricultural sustainability. Two major issues regarding cowpea research have been highlighted in recent years—the establishment of core collections and the characterization of landraces—as crucial to the implementation of environmentally resilient and nutrition-sensitive production systems. In this work, we have collected, mapped, and characterized the morphological attributes of 61 cowpea genotypes, from 10 landraces spanning across six agro-ecological zones and three provinces in Mozambique. Our results reveal that local landraces retain a high level of morphological diversity without a specific geographical pattern, suggesting the existence of gene flow. Nevertheless, accessions from one landrace, i.e., Maringué, seem to be the most promising in terms of yield and nutrition-related parameters, and could therefore be integrated into the ongoing conservation and breeding efforts in the region towards the production of elite varieties of cowpea.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 4271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Zurek ◽  
Aniek Hebinck ◽  
Adrian Leip ◽  
Joost Vervoort ◽  
Marijke Kuiper ◽  
...  

Steering the EU food system towards a sustainability transformation requires a vast and actionable knowledge base available to a range of public and private actors. Few have captured this complexity by assessing food systems from a multi-dimensional and multi-level perspective, which would include (1) nutrition and diet, environmental and economic outcomes together with social equity dimensions and (2) system interactions across country, EU and global scales. This paper addresses this gap in food systems research and science communication by providing an integrated analytical approach and new ways to communicate this complexity outside science. Based on a transdisciplinary science approach with continuous stakeholder input, the EU Horizon2020 project ‘Metrics, Models and Foresight for European SUStainable Food And Nutrition Security’ (SUSFANS) developed a five-step process: Creating a participatory space; designing a conceptual framework of the EU food system; developing food system performance metrics; designing a modelling toolbox and developing a visualization tool. The Sustainable Food and Nutrition-Visualizer, designed to communicate complex policy change-impacts and trade-off questions, enables an informed debate about trade-offs associated with options for change among food system actors as well as in the policy making arena. The discussion highlights points for further research related to indicator development, reach of assessment models, participatory processes and obstacles in science communication.


Author(s):  
Suresh Chandra Babu ◽  
Kamiljon Akramov

In the last two decades, Central Asia has gone through several transitions in institutions and governance, each with consequences for the agricultural sectors in the region. Since their independence, the five countries Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, have made considerable progress towards increasing domestic food production. However, food security in the region is still threatened by major geopolitical and socio-economic challenges. Lack of support from institutions to advance farming has resulted in the low level of food security in the region. Lack of research and extension of support to farmers and low capacity for designing evidence-based policies are major challenges to the region’s food security. This chapter identifies critical issues and challenges faced by Central Asian countries for attaining short-term and long-term food and nutrition security, and the implications for BRICS and other emerging economies.


Author(s):  
Jildyz Urbaeva

In this chapter on “Redefining Silk Roads: Social Businesses and Crafts as Approaches for Improving Women’s Situations in Central Asia,” the authors show how social entrepreneurship is only starting to evolve in Central Asian countries. Women experience multiple barriers to starting and carrying out social businesses successfully: a lack of capital, underdeveloped policies, and limited access to markets within the region and beyond. Despite these significant challenges, there are factors suggesting strong potential for success in the long term, such as local expertise and skills, access to training, and the support of international development organizations. Projects that have been implemented previously suggest the need for intermediary organizations that can increase access to global markets, advocate on behalf of social businesses, and improve access to capital investments. Improving social entrepreneurship models in the region will have not only financial and social gains for women and their communities; importantly, these models can provide psychosocial benefits as well, such as increasing women’s autonomy within the household and their ability for collective efficacy.


2013 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 160-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamal Aryal ◽  
Rajan Kotru ◽  
Karma Phuntsho

Throughout the Hindu Kush Himalayas, uncultivated plants provide a green social and cultural security to millions of people supporting their livelihood. Review on evaluating the multifunctional role of uncultivated plants in perspective of livelihood support finds that plants add diversity to local food systems, reinforce local culture and contribute diversity to farming systems, and finally are important for household food and nutrition security, social security, income generation and health care. Further, this paper clarifies that local people maintain and conserve diversity for the sake of use. The wise conservation and use of uncultivated plants are essential elements for increasing food security, eliminating poverty, and maintaining the environment. However, the value and potential of uncultivated plants for food and nutrition security, household level health care, income generation opportunity are not yet realized. Fast changing climate and early projections on its impacts suggest that such programmes must increasingly consider the sustenance of ecosystem that promotes uncultivated plants as basis for the welfare of millions.


IDS Bulletin ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayako Ebata ◽  
Nicholas Nisbett ◽  
Stuart Gillespie

Measures to slow down the spread of Covid-19 have had profound effects on the food and nutrition security of poor and marginalised households and communities. This article provides an overview of the effects of Covid-19 on food systems across low- and middle-income countries using resilience and political economy lenses, before proposing approaches to build back resilient and equitable food systems. First, future interventions need to target structural issues that limit people’s agency in accessing nutritious and diverse food and production capital. Second, local innovation systems and institutions require investment to create a market environment that benefits domestic (small and medium) enterprises and agri‑food supply chain workers without jeopardising the environment. Third, interventions need to be informed by a diverse set of opinions that include the voices of the most marginalised.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawit Alemu ◽  
Abebaw Assaye

This report presents an early assessment of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on agricultural commercialisation, food and nutrition security, labour and employment, and poverty and well-being in rural Ethiopia. Data was collected from a stratified random sample of 107 households (23 female- and 84 male-headed). Respondents were drawn from a subset of households interviewed in a 2018 APRA survey of smallholder rice farmers in five kebeles (villages) in the Fogera Plain area of Amhara Region. The COVID-19 household survey data is complemented by data from 23 key informant interviews conducted in the kebeles. The data collection for this COVID-19 study will be carried out over three rounds. This report presents insights obtained from the first round conducted during late June/early July 2020.


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