Can economic development be a driver of food system sustainability? Empirical evidence from a global sustainability index and a multi-country analysis

Abstract

Despite representing a growing element of the international community’s discourse, the sustainability of food systems and the challenge of its empirical measurement are still highly debated. In this paper, we propose to address this gap by computing a global food system sustainability index which we then use in a cross-country analysis covering 94 countries in low-, middle- and high-income regions. The analysis reveals a strong non-linear but positive correlation between the food system sustainability index and countries’ individual GDP per capita. This relationship suggests some possible degree of endogeneity between food system sustainability and economic development. We then use the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways framework and Individual Conditional Expectations modeling techniques to explore how the sustainability of food systems is projected to evolve in the future as countries move up the economic development ladder. The projections indicate that for lower income countries, the change is usually more significant than for higher income countries. The analysis also reveals that the different dimensions of sustainability will not all contribute equally to future improvements in food system sustainability. In particular, investments targeting social and food security & nutrition dimensions are projected to have a greater effect on the sustainability of food systems than investment/interventions aiming at the environment or economic domains. For countries located at the lower end of the economic development spectrum, this would imply that, even with limited resources, policy-makers could substantially improve the sustainability of countries’ food systems by prioritizing (sub)national policies and interventions focused on social and food security & nutrition domains.

Harnessing the connectivity of climate change, food systems and diets: Taking action to improve human and planetary health

“…For example, policies and investments that target social and food security and nutrition dimensions of transformation are projected to have a greater effect on the sustainability of food systems than investments to improve environment or economic domains. Of course, the emphasis on where to intervene depends on country contexts, resources, and subnational policies ( Béné et al, 2022 ).…”

“…Unstructured governance mechanisms leave power imbalances unfettered, often resulting in food industries with an increased market and corporate concentration and pervasive influence on prices, products, policies, research, and innovation ( Clapp et al, 2018 , Clapp and Scrinis, 2017 ). Among competing food system outcomes, economic growth often tends to influence decision-making, incentives, and priorities for governments and corporations ( Fanzo et al, 2021a , Béné et al, 2022 ), eclipsing environmental and human health priorities.…”

Building Global Consensus on Nutrition Metrics to Support Food System Transformation: A Dairy Case Study

“…As aptly summarized by researchers affiliated with Countdown to 2030, one of the third-party frameworks in the audit, “Healthy diets are essential for nutrition and health. Sub-optimal diets are a direct cause of malnutrition in all its forms, including undernutrition and diet-related noncommunicable diseases (eg, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, stroke).” 3 Although most recommendations to make food systems more sustainable focus on environmental issues, a 2022 research paper by Béné et al 4 finds that efforts aimed at the nutrition and social domains “are projected to have a greater effect on the sustainability of food systems” compared with interventions for the economic and environmental domains.…”

Forced labour risk is pervasive in the US land-based food supply

“…Analysing the sustainability impacts or risks embedded in countries’ food consumption is an important lens for monitoring progress, particularly for policymakers. While some work has used a country-level lens to analyse aspects of the social performance of food systems 2 , 3 , no work to date has attempted to link social performance to particular food commodities at scale for countries. This level of resolution is critical to ensuring policy coherence as countries design targeted food systems interventions (for example, taxes) to achieve the SDGs while remaining within planetary boundaries.…”