Roadmap to Land Use and Food Systems Transformation

The global food system exerts enormous environmental pressures, accounting for up to 30 percent of global greenhouse emissions, over 70 percent of freshwater withdrawals, and is the principal driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss. While the world already produces enough food to nourish the current world population, almost 30 percent of calories produced are wasted or lost across the food value chain. In order to mitigate the resource impact of end-to-end production and consumption of food, and to connect sustainable agricultural practices with healthy dietary choices, it is vital that decision makers adopt an integrated food systems approach. Such an approach requires a roadmap towards common goals that will help to determine how international and plurilateral process and governance arrangements such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Convention of Biodiversity, World Trade Organization, World Health Organization, and G20 and G7’s can be best navigated and become the battleground to align policy advocacy and campaign efforts around land use and food systems transformation.

This dialogue will bring together a diverse and multi-disciplinary group of leading experts from land use, food, climate, and health sectors to consider where and how current and new initiatives have sought to deliver on global environmental commitments and climate targets of the Paris Agreement. Participants will consider the extent of their success in the past four years and investigate how these learnings could be harnessed to design an innovative and holistic framework for land use and food systems transformation.

Roadmap to Land Use and Food Systems Transformation is organized by the Hoffmann Centre for Sustainable Resource Economy at Chatham House and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security.