IIED ISSUE PAPER
As discussed in the Introduction, food systems
governance plays a key role in both reducing the
negative impacts of food systems on the planet
and enabling them to change, so that they deliver
improved environmental, health, economic and societal
outcomes (van Bers et al., 2019). In this section the
paper discusses key concepts and characteristics of
food systems governance which could help advance
environmental agendas, summarising and building
on academic debates from several fields, including
the literature on food systems and governance,
sustainability, and environmental governance.
Research on food systems governance is relatively
recent, tends to be highly theoretical, and has been
critiqued for being conceptually fragmented (Hospes
and Brons, 2016; van Bers et al., 2019; Vignola,
Oosterveer and Béné, 2021). Multiple concepts
or features of governance have been put forward
in support of a transition to more sustainable food
systems, often taking inspiration from other fields of
study, such as global environmental change research
and sustainability science (van Bers et al., 2016, 2019;
Guijt, de Steenhuijsen Piters and Smaling, 2021). Many
of these authors use different words or concepts to talk
about how food systems governance could be improved
to contribute to environmental sustainability, as well as
other outcomes such as food and nutrition security.
There are clear similarities between the approaches
to, or features of, governance which are thought to
be needed in order to transform societal systems
towards increased sustainability. Four key concepts
that are discussed across the literature on food
systems governance could be summarised as:
(1) collaboration across and between different scales,
sectors and interest groups; (2) collective action
and food regimes based on food sovereignty; (3) the
capacity for governance actors to reflect and learn;
and (4) the capacity for governance to adapt to change
(Hospes and Brons, 2016; van Bers et al., 2016,
2019; Vignola, Oosterveer and Béné, 2021). These
broadly mirror similar approaches to governance
in the literature on biodiversity, sustainability and
environmental governance: integrative governance,
inclusive governance, adaptive governance and pluralist
governance (Chaffin et al., 2016; Visseren-Hamakers
et al., 2021).
Thinking of food systems as social-ecological systems
is a helpful framework for understanding how food
systems governance can help tackle the triple planetary
crisis. In the field of environmental governance, the
transformation of social-ecological systems, such as
food systems, towards sustainability is recognised to
require transformative governance (Chaffin et al., 2016;
IPBES, 2019a; Visseren-Hamakers et al., 2021). While
this concept is still nascent, it is typically understood
to combine four features: integrative, inclusive,
pluralist (or informed) and adaptive governance (see
Box 4 for definitions). None of these approaches is
novel individually, but in combination they have great
potential to drive transformative change. Most of these
characteristics also overlap closely with ideas discussed
in the literature on food systems governance — indeed,
many authors working in that field have themselves
borrowed concepts from environmental science and
system governance (Hospes and Brons, 2016; Vignola,
Oosterveer and Béné, 2021).
Without wishing to add to the proliferation of abstract
ideas and terminology for talking about food systems
governance, in this paper the concept of transformative
governance practically and succinctly describes the
kind of governance that could help food systems
to advance environmental agendas and improve
environmental governance. Therefore, ‘transformative
food systems governance’ could help to bring together
some of these conceptual approaches and be used
to refer to ways of governing food systems which are
inclusive, adaptive and integrative, and draw on different
knowledge systems.
The remainder of this section draws on examples
from academic and grey literature on food systems
and the environment to show how features of
transformative governance are being applied within
food systems — and having an impact on environmental
agendas. As noted above and in Box 4 above, it is the
combination of these features of governance that makes
them transformative.
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