What Is the Vulnerability of a Food System to Global Environmental Change?

TLDR

Food systems, viewed as coupled human–environment social‑ecological systems, face vulnerability assessment gaps because existing studies focus on either social or ecological aspects, and actor trade‑offs complicate holistic evaluation, necessitating a new synthetic approach. The study proposes an integrated framework that combines key processes and system characteristics to assess food‑system vulnerability to environmental change, highlighting the need for empirical validation. The approach integrates factors across the food system, concentrating on key processes and system characteristics to evaluate vulnerability to environmental change.

Abstract

Assessing the vulnerability of broadly described food systems to global environmental change requires a new, synthetic approach. Food systems can best be conceptualized as the integration of humans and the environment or coupled social-ecological systems. However, much of the existing literature on vulnerability assessment focuses on either social or ecological systems, and conceptual gaps limit the holistic evaluation of linked systems in which both social and ecosystem outcomes are important. I suggest an approach with which to integrate factors across a food system to assess the system's vulnerability to environmental change by focusing on key processes and system characteristics. However, the multiple objectives of different actors in food systems make tradeoffs inevitable and complicate the evaluation of vulnerability. Further development and use of this approach is a promising avenue for future research because empirical evidence is needed to further elaborate these understandings.