Food sovereignty: An inclusive model for feeding the world and cooling the planet

Abstract

The framework of food sovereignty emerged on the global stage in the mid-1990s as diverse social movements representing peasant, Indigenous, fisher, and small-scale farming communities were experiencing a confluence of crises—structural adjustment, rising threats to biodiversity, climate change, rural poverty, and growing levels of world hunger— that continue to accelerate into the present day. In response to these challenges, food sovereignty movements promote policies to ensure rights to healthy and culturally appropriate food, produced through ecologically sustainable methods. The food sovereignty framework emerges from participatory governance structures at intersecting scales—from the local to the global—to support people’s rights to define their own food and agricultural systems. This primer examines the arguments for a rights-based food sovereignty framework to support diets for planetary health and identifies cross-sectoral roles, responsibilities, and challenges in promoting diversified agroecosystems that can feed the world and cool the planet. The framework of food sovereignty emerged on the global stage in the mid-1990s as diverse social movements representing peasant, Indigenous, fisher, and small-scale farming communities were experiencing a confluence of crises—structural adjustment, rising threats to biodiversity, climate change, rural poverty, and growing levels of world hunger— that continue to accelerate into the present day. In response to these challenges, food sovereignty movements promote policies to ensure rights to healthy and culturally appropriate food, produced through ecologically sustainable methods. The food sovereignty framework emerges from participatory governance structures at intersecting scales—from the local to the global—to support people’s rights to define their own food and agricultural systems. This primer examines the arguments for a rights-based food sovereignty framework to support diets for planetary health and identifies cross-sectoral roles, responsibilities, and challenges in promoting diversified agroecosystems that can feed the world and cool the planet.