scholarly journals Grassroots and Global Governance: Can Global–Local Linkages Foster Food System Resilience for Small Northern Canadian Communities?

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 2415
Author(s):  
Carla Johnston ◽  
Andrew Spring

Communities in Canada’s Northwest Territories (NWT) are at the forefront of the global climate emergency. Yet, they are not passive victims; local-level programs are being implemented across the region to maintain livelihoods and promote adaptation. At the same time, there is a recent call within global governance literature to pay attention to how global policy is implemented and affecting people on the ground. Thinking about these two processes, we ask the question: (how) can global governance assist northern Indigenous communities in Canada in reaching their goals of adapting their food systems to climate change? To answer this question, we argue for a “community needs” approach when engaging in global governance literature and practice, which puts community priorities and decision-making first. As part of a collaborative research partnership, we highlight the experiences of Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation, located in Kakisa, NWT, Canada. We include their successes of engaging in global network building and the systemic roadblock of lack of formal land tenure. Moreover, we analyze potential opportunities for this community to engage with global governance instruments and continue connecting to global networks that further their goals related to climate change adaptation and food sovereignty.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9s10 ◽  
pp. 21-42
Author(s):  
Abrar Chaudbury ◽  
Saher Hasnain

Climate change poses unprecedented and complex challenges to global food systems. Critical vulnerabilities, continuing inequalities, and unsustainability have demonstrated that food systems need significant intervention in order to deliver safe, just, and healthy food for all, against the backdrop of a changing climate. Innovative interventions and effective financing are needed across the food system to achieve these grand ambitions. While there is recognition of a systems approach in the face of complex issues such as climate change, interventions and financing mechanisms have historically focused narrowly on production or specific sectors within food and related systems. Given the diverse array of stresses and shocks, this approach will not achieve the desired paradigm shifts necessary to secure global food systems and meet the Paris Agreement climate targets. Through a comprehensive review of projects funded through the Green Climate Fund (GCF), this paper shows that paradigm shifting interventions can benefit from a food systems perspective by moving beyond specific sectors and activities and delivering outcomes across the socio-economic and environmental spheres. Climate change and food system challenges are complex and necessitate system approaches, and financing instruments need to be designed and structured with systemic complexity in mind.


2022 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Springmann ◽  
F. Freund

AbstractAgricultural subsidies are an important factor for influencing food production and therefore part of a food system that is seen as neither healthy nor sustainable. Here we analyse options for reforming agricultural subsidies in line with health and climate-change objectives on one side, and economic objectives on the other. Using an integrated modelling framework including economic, environmental, and health assessments, we find that on a global scale several reform options could lead to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and improvements in population health without reductions in economic welfare. Those include a repurposing of up to half of agricultural subsidies to support the production of foods with beneficial health and environmental characteristics, including fruits, vegetables, and other horticultural products, and combining such repurposing with a more equal distribution of subsidy payments globally. The findings suggest that reforming agricultural subsidy schemes based on health and climate-change objectives can be economically feasible and contribute to transitions towards healthy and sustainable food systems.


Author(s):  
Shaikh Mohammad Kais

Global aquaculture is one of the key features of present global agro-food systems. Though aquaculture is one of the fastest growing industries in the world, its growth trajectory is confronted with various challenges including climate disruptions. Since both aquaculture and climate change have regional variations, their interconnections are very complex and require systematic investigation. In various regions of the world, especially in the Global South, aquaculture countries are assessing those interconnections and devising resilience-enhancing programs for the development of the sector. Thorough investigations are required for a comprehensive understanding of the complex interconnections between climate vulnerability and resilience of global aquaculture. Drawing on primary and secondary data from the Bangladesh shrimp sector, and using conceptual lenses of global climate change and resilience, this chapter critically examines how the industrial shrimp aquaculture in Bangladesh is affected by climate disruptions and how the shrimp farming communities address these challenges.


Author(s):  
Shaikh Mohammad Kais

Global aquaculture is one of the key features of present global agro-food systems. Though aquaculture is one of the fastest growing industries in the world, its growth trajectory is confronted with various challenges including climate disruptions. Since both aquaculture and climate change have regional variations, their interconnections are very complex and require systematic investigation. In various regions of the world, especially in the Global South, aquaculture countries are assessing those interconnections and devising resilience-enhancing programs for the development of the sector. Thorough investigations are required for a comprehensive understanding of the complex interconnections between climate vulnerability and resilience of global aquaculture. Drawing on primary and secondary data from the Bangladesh shrimp sector, and using conceptual lenses of global climate change and resilience, this chapter critically examines how the industrial shrimp aquaculture in Bangladesh is affected by climate disruptions and how the shrimp farming communities address these challenges.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 392-403
Author(s):  
Alexandra E. Morgan ◽  
Jessica Fanzo

Abstract Purpose of Review The purpose of this review is to describe the combined impacts of the nutrition transition and climate change in Nigeria and analyze the country’s national food-related policy options that could support human and planetary health outcomes. Recent Findings This paper uses a food systems framework to analyze how the nutrition transition and climate change interact in Nigeria affecting both diets and the double burden of malnutrition, resulting in what has been termed the syndemic. Interactions between climate change and the nutrition transition in Nigeria are exacerbating diet-related inequities and will continue to do so if food systems continue on their current trajectory and without significant transformation. Siloed policy actions that attempt to mitigate one aspect of food system risk can create a negative feedback loop in another aspect of the food system. Our analysis finds that Nigeria has five national policies that include actionable steps to address food system insufficiencies; however, each of these policies is constrained by the boundaries of singular nutrition, climate change, and agricultural objectives. The country should consider a coherent policy environment that explicitly identifies and links underlying systemic and institutional drivers between climate change and malnutrition that simultaneously and comprehensively address both human and planetary health outcomes of food systems. Summary The systemic and institutional outcomes of this emerging syndemic—undernutrition, obesity, and climate change—are inexorably linked. Nigeria lacks a coherent policy environment taking on this challenging syndemic landscape. The analysis in this paper highlights the need for Nigeria to prioritize their national nutrition and agricultural and climate policies that uncouple feedback loops within food systems to address climate change and malnutrition in all its forms.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Calo

This special issue aims to develop how Diversified Farming Systems (DFS) may contribute to adaptive capacity in order to confer resilience to agricultural systems. In this perspective article, I argue that a framework for DFS and adaptive capacity must adequately contend with the role of farmland tenure on the shape of food systems to be both internally coherent and socially redistributive. Yet, both DFS and adaptive capacity scholarship deemphasize or mischaracterize the role of farmland tenure in favor of ecosystem dynamics. In this paper, I bring together lessons from the agrarian change literature and established critiques of resilience thinking to demonstrate core problems with a framework aimed at linking DFS to adaptive capacity without adequately addressing the role of farmland tenure. Namely, applying resilience thinking as a framework to understand food systems change prioritizes concern over final “states” or processes of farming systems and may ignore who has the power to adapt or who derives benefits from adaptation. The critiques of resilience thinking inform that the result of this apolitical elision is (1) entrenchment of neoliberal logics that place responsibility to cultivate adaptation on individual farmers and (2) provisioning of legitimacy for land tenure systems that can most readily adopt DFS, without understanding how well these systems distribute public benefits. Resilience reformers call for ways to include more power aware analysis when applying resilience thinking to complex socio-technical systems. I suggest that centering the role of land tenure into the frameworks of DFS and adaptive capacity provides a lens to observe the power relations that mediate any benefits of agricultural diversification. Integrating analysis of the social and legal structures of the food system into the DFS for adaptive capacity formulation is a crucial step to transforming resilience thinking from an apolitical tool to transformative and power-aware applied science.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Baldy

Since Agenda 21, the local level has become important in terms of facing global challenges through local action. One of these is ensuring the sustainability of the food system. In German politics, this is a relatively new issue even at the local level. Nevertheless, two smaller cities in southern Germany have decided to change their local food systems towards sustainability. Hence, this paper deals with questions of how local actors are framing the food system and what this means for increasing sustainability. The analysis of qualitative interviews and participant observations based on frame analysis provides deeper insights into understandings of local food systems by actors. This paper aims to explore how framings of problems, solutions and motivations provide or restrict opportunities to increase local food system sustainability. Terms like sustainability or awareness are framed differently. Using the same term to mean different things can have negative effects on the acceptance of policymaking referring to food system transformation. Besides, this paper shows that omissions within the framing counteract the development of sustainable local food policy. Hence, it is important to reflect the political implications of absent framings as well to facilitate mutual understanding and consequently, food system change.


2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 1006-1014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roni A Neff ◽  
Iris L Chan ◽  
Katherine Clegg Smith

AbstractBackgroundThere is strong evidence that what we eat and how it is produced affects climate change.ObjectiveThe present paper examines coverage of food system contributions to climate change in top US newspapers.DesignUsing a sample of sixteen leading US newspapers from September 2005 to January 2008, two coders identified ‘food and climate change’ and ‘climate change’ articles based on specified criteria. Analyses examined variation across time and newspaper, the level of content relevant to food systems’ contributions to climate change, and how such content was framed.ResultsThere were 4582 ‘climate change’ articles in these newspapers during this period. Of these, 2·4 % mentioned food or agriculture contributions, with 0·4 % coded as substantially focused on the issue and 0·5 % mentioning food animal contributions. The level of content on food contributions to climate change increased across time. Articles initially addressed the issue primarily in individual terms, expanding to address business and government responsibility more in later articles.ConclusionsUS newspaper coverage of food systems’ effects on climate change during the study period increased, but still did not reflect the increasingly solid evidence of the importance of these effects. Increased coverage may lead to responses by individuals, industry and government. Based on co-benefits with nutritional public health messages and climate change’s food security threats, the public health nutrition community has an important role to play in elaborating and disseminating information about food and climate change for the US media.


2013 ◽  
Vol 01 (01) ◽  
pp. 1350006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ying CHEN ◽  
Zhe LIU

Human society is facing great challenges to address global climate change. How to move the international climate process forward is still a serious problem for politicians. Geoengineering's, so called Plan B to cope with climate change has attracted attentions of the international community with a lot of debate on its impact, risks from an ethical view as well as global governance at the level. In this paper, we focus on some important issues of geoengineering including the definition, characteristics, ethics and global governance, etc. and then put forward some suggestions for China's considerations.


2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 185-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Gough

This paper considers the challenge to global social policy posed by global climate change. It sets side by side global social policies and global climate change policies, and surveys the governance of each. The first part summarises global social policy in recent years, distinguishing (1) the policies and practices pursued in the global arena, and (2) the structures of global governance and the role of significant global actors. The second part repeats this at a greater length for global climate change. The third part then considers the relationship between these two sets of policies/practices and governance structures, in particular the potential conflicts between the pursuit of social justice and environmental sustainability. It identifies two possible responses – compensation and co-benefits – and maps these onto current global actors, before concluding with a radical vision of eco-social policy.


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