Abstract
Sustainability considerations have been absent from most food security assessments conducted to date, despite the tremendous economic, environmental, and social implications of meeting accelerating food demand in the face of water shortages and climate change. In addition, previous food security work has generally focused only on achieving adequate calories, rather than addressing dietary diversity and micronutrient adequacy, both of which are critical to maintaining a healthy overall nutritional status. In response to the limitations of previous assessments, a new methodology is proposed here based on the concept of “sustainable nutrition security” (SNS). This novel assessment methodology is intended to remedy both kinds of deficiencies in the previous work by defining seven metrics, each based on a combination of multiple indicators, for use in characterizing sustainable nutrition outcomes of food systems: (1) food nutrient adequacy; (2) ecosystem stability; (3) food affordability and availability; (4) sociocultural wellbeing; (5) food safety; (6) resilience; and (7) waste and loss reduction. Each of the metrics comprises multiple indicators that are combined to derive an overall score (0–100). A novel SNS assessment methodology based on these metrics can be deployed by decision-makers and investors to set meaningful goals, track progress, and evaluate the potential impact of food system interventions intended to improve sustainability and human nutrition outcomes.
Highlights
The world faces an escalating challenge to meet accelerating demand for sustainably-produced, nutritious food in the face of human population pressure, resource scarcity, ecosystem degradation, and climate change [1]
We developed an initial set of sustainable nutrition security (SNS) metrics as part of a consensus report by a number of nutrition, climate change, food system, and economic experts representing a range of public and private institutions [6]
Extreme events, including those related to climate change, have begun to induce excessive volatility in global food prices [44], causing the United Kingdom to recently sponsor a special report on the resilience of the global food system [54]
Summary
The world faces an escalating challenge to meet accelerating demand for sustainably-produced, nutritious food in the face of human population pressure, resource scarcity, ecosystem degradation, and climate change [1]. The seven chosen metrics were: (1) food nutrient adequacy; (2) ecosystem stability; (3) food affordability and availability; (4) sociocultural wellbeing; (5) resilience; (6) food safety; and (7) waste and loss reduction These metrics were selected due to their importance as measures of the overall food system and its impact on human health, as well as its influence on social, economic and environmental sustainability. In this initial presentation and application of the metrics, our interest is food system performance relating to SNS at the national level, and we sought metrics which can be derived from data that are currently available or can be readily estimated for any given country. The overall document was given a final review by a larger, broad group of stakeholders from academia, governmental agencies, and the private sector (see Acknowledgements)
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