The One UNEP Sustainable Food Systems approach aims to ‘contribute to feeding the world while nourishing the planet’ through supporting a transition to ‘a sustainable food system that contributes to the integrity of biodiversity and ecosystems, promotes climate stability and a pollution free planet, and enables healthy diets for all people’. The coordinated approach sets out an ambitious agenda to leverage environment-focused interventions to trigger food systems transformation globally.
Food systems encompass every actor and stage in the life cycle of food, from the way we consume it to the people, processes, and organizations that work together to produce, distribute, deliver, and manage its waste. UNEP advocates for a healthy global food system that prioritizes resilience, sustainability, and equity, and exists in harmony with nature – promoting sustainable food consumption and production patterns that protect and enhance biodiversity, support climate stability and a pollution-free planet.
The global food system is one of the main drivers of the triple planetary crisis, being a significant contributor to climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste. It also falls short in delivering positive and equitable outcomes for human health and sustainable livelihoods. Our food systems are also extremely vulnerable to a changing climate and degradation of the natural resource base. Extreme weather events like droughts and floods cause crop failures and food shortages, cause major disruptions in the food system, and can contribute to political instability as well as malnutrition and hunger. In turn, the lack of resilience in food systems to respond to changing climatic conditions can accelerate biodiversity loss. The unaccounted costs of the burdens our current food system has on people and the planet are currently estimated at 15 trillion USD a year, equivalent to 12 per cent of GDP in 2020 (Ruggeri, 2024).
The One UNEP Sustainable Food Systems approach seeks to support the transformation of current linear models of food consumption and production. We need to meet the health and nutrition needs of a growing and urbanizing population without harming the planet while also supporting farmers and their communities to transition towards nature-positive and climate-resilient food production systems. Agricultural and commodity systems must restore and regenerate rather than degrade land, soil, and biodiversity and the food sector and consumers must adopt circular approaches that prioritize sustainable and healthy diets for all while minimizing waste.
A foundational premise of the approach is that food systems transformation will enable public and private sectors to support the achievement of multiple goals across the Multilateral Environment Agreements (MEAs), with specific focus on the Global Biodiversity Framework and Global Framework on Chemicals, as well as progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals and National Food Systems Pathways.
