Disentangling complex sustainability issues in global food systems

Abstract

Global relationships of demand, supply and trade of international commodities increasingly present a challenge for the conservation of threatened ecosystems. These dynamics cross sectors and scales. Food supply chains connect consumers to distant ecosystems where commodities are produced, traded and exported for the production of products in other industry sectors. Such is the case of soybeans. While soybean oil is the second most consumed oil in the world, around 75% of soybean production is used for animal feed. Thus changes in demand for meat products in places like Europe or China can have serious environmental as well as social impacts on source countries such as Brazil. Production of soy is overtaking huge areas in fragile ecosystems such as the Brazilian Cerrado, The Amazon, The Chaco and the Atlantic Forests of South America. Biodiversity impact is thus effectively exported via international trade in food commodities. However there is lack of transparency around flows of commodities and the roles of different actors, and there is a lack of understanding on barriers to sustainable production and trade. This talk will introduce the use of mental models on supply chain actors as a new method to work on supply chain governance given the cross-scale nature of supply chain impacts and the cross-scale actor engagement that is needed to address impacts within supply chains. It will include a brief overview of a project using mental models currently being carried out by the Luc Hoffmann Institute in collaboration with several WWF offices, academic and research institutions including The University of Queensland, the Stockholm Environment Institute, and the World Conservation Monitoring Centre. The project aims to inform strategies for concerted action via the sharing of mental models.