"Greening" global food governance

Abstract

It has been argued that there are two broad criteria to judge humanity’s success in feeding itself: “(i) the proportion of people whose access to basic nutritional requirements is secure; and (ii) the extent to which global food production is sustainable” (Daily et al., 1998, p. 1291). According to these criteria, we have failed. First, 870 million people worldwide were estimated to be chronically undernourished in the period from 2010 to 2012 (FAO, 2012a). Second, the industrial model of global food production and distribution is not environmentally sustainable. Approximately 19 to 29 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are directly attributed to agriculture. Agriculture is also the leading driver of deforestation and forest degradation globally, a process that accounts for an additional 17 percent of global carbon emissions (Vermeulen, Campbell, & Ingram, 2012).

Keywords

• governance