Food Security and its Connection With Environmental Economics and Accounting: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Objective: Map and present the state of the scientific art on food security and its connection with Economics and Environmental Accounting. Theoretical framework: The limits of economic use of ecosystem services were extrapolated, the evidence of which lies in climate change and subsequent heterogeneous food availability. From this perspective, the accounting and economic impacts of environmental changes are apparently underestimated by industrial chains that exploit natural capital. Method: A bibliometric analysis of scientific publications was carried out, that were prospected in the Scopus database. 377 scientific publications published between 1986 and 2023 were retrieved. The mining and analysis of the correlation between Economics and Accounting with food security was carried out based on of the co-occurrence of keywords indicated by the authors of the retrieved documents, using the VantagePoint® software. Results: The results of the bibliometric search show greater progress in research in environmental economics. Conversely, the gaps in the valuation of environmental assets, the absence of validated indicators for the inclusion of natural capital in national accounting systems and the voluntary nature of the disclosure of accounting, financial and socio-environmental data may be the explanations for the lack of connection between food safety and environmental accounting. Research implications: Scientific advances in the calculation of the Green Gross Domestic Product and/or in the adaptation of the SEEA (System of Environmental-Economic Accounts) methodology can generate accounting and economic data from the organization of stocks of environmental assets and favor the availability of food.