How can diverse national food and land-use priorities be reconciled with global sustainability targets? Lessons from the FABLE initiative

• Published in: Sustainability science 2023, Vol.18 (1), p.335-345
• Main Authors: Mosnier, Aline, Schmidt-Traub, Guido, Obersteiner, Michael, Jones, Sarah, Javalera-Rincon, Valeria, DeClerck, Fabrice, Thomson, Marcus, Sperling, Frank, Harrison, Paula, Pérez-Guzmán, Katya, McCord, Gordon Carlos, Navarro-Garcia, Javier, Marcos-Martinez, Raymundo, Wu, Grace C., Poncet, Jordan, Douzal, Clara, Steinhauser, Jan, Monjeau, Adrian, Frank, Federico, Lehtonen, Heikki, Rämö, Janne, Leach, Nicholas, Gonzalez-Abraham, Charlotte E., Ghosh, Ranjan Kumar, Jha, Chandan, Singh, Vartika, Bai, Zhaohai, Jin, Xinpeng, Ma, Lin, Strokov, Anton, Potashnikov, Vladimir, Orduña-Cabrera, Fernando, Neubauer, Rudolf, Diaz, Maria, Penescu, Liviu, Domínguez, Efraín Antonio, Chavarro, John, Pena, Andres, Basnet, Shyam, Fetzer, Ingo, Baker, Justin, Zerriffi, Hisham, Reyes Gallardo, René, Bryan, Brett Anthony, Hadjikakou, Michalis, Lotze-Campen, Hermann, Stevanovic, Miodrag, Smith, Alison, Costa, Wanderson, Habiburrachman, A. H. F., Immanuel, Gito, Selomane, Odirilwe, Daloz, Anne-Sophie, Andrew, Robbie, van Oort, Bob, Imanirareba, Dative, Molla, Kiflu Gedefe, Woldeyes, Firew Bekele, Soterroni, Aline C., Scarabello, Marluce, Ramos, Fernando M., Boer, Rizaldi, Winarni, Nurul Laksmi, Supriatna, Jatna, Low, Wai Sern, Fan, Andrew Chiah Howe, Naramabuye, François Xavier, Niyitanga, Fidèle, Olguín, Marcela, Popp, Alexander, Rasche, Livia, Godfray, Charles, Hall, Jim W., Grundy, Mike J., Wang, Xiaoxi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Climate change; Climate Change Management and Policy; Consortia; Deforestation; Earth and Environmental Science; Environment; Environmental Economics; Environmental Management; Folklore; Food; Land use; Landscape Ecology; Public Health; Special Feature: Globally-Consistent National Pathways towards Sustainable Food and Land-use Systems; Special Feature: Overview Article; Sustainability; Sustainable Development
• ISSN: 1862-4065; 1862-4057
• DOI: 10.1007/s11625-022-01227-7

There is an urgent need for countries to transition their national food and land-use systems toward food and nutritional security, climate stability, and environmental integrity. How can countries satisfy their demands while jointly delivering the required transformative change to achieve global sustainability targets? Here, we present a collaborative approach developed with the FABLE—Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land, and Energy—Consortium to reconcile both global and national elements for developing national food and land-use system pathways. This approach includes three key features: (1) global targets, (2) country-driven multi-objective pathways, and (3) multiple iterations of pathway refinement informed by both national and international impacts. This approach strengthens policy coherence and highlights where greater national and international ambition is needed to achieve global goals (e.g., the SDGs). We discuss how this could be used to support future climate and biodiversity negotiations and what further developments would be needed.