Building Resilience in Food Value Chains Through Natural Capital Accounting (NCA); a Perspective From the Asian Region

Abstract

Several studies have addressed issues related to food value chains focusing on reducing food loss and food waste (FLW) and improving efficiency and improve food security. In order to make food more accessible, affordable, and safe, food systems have contributed to unsustainable land-use practices, depletion of freshwater, pollution from chemicals, disruption of nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, biodiversity loss, and climate change. The present research captures broad range issues of food value chains but does not pay attention to access to natural capital and its dependencies. Since, it may have variety of impact and dependencies in their direct operations in the value chain. Therefore, this study proposes a framework to measure access to natural capital and its dependencies in food value chains and mainstreaming NCA within organizations of food value chains. A more-detailed quantification at each stage would also help a better understanding of the driving factors of FLW and natural capital exploitation at different stages. As a result, it helps policy-makers better understand which policies and strategies have been most-effective at achieving FLW reductions, and contribute overall to the reduction of FLW and the sustainability of the food system. Further, it helps to formulate regulations for companies that are damaging the natural capital and provide incentives for those who adopted sustainable management to mitigate environmental degradation.