IIED ISSUE PAPER

BOX 5. REDUCING GHG EMISSIONS
THROUGH A COORDINATED FOOD
PROCUREMENT POLICY
In the context of a broader vision for becoming a
sustainable city and leader in climate mitigation,
Malmö’s policy for sustainable development and food
— approved at a meeting of the municipal assembly
in 2010 — aimed to ensure that all food purchased
and served by the municipality was organic2 by
2020, and to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions relating to food procurement by 40% by
2020, relative to 2002 levels (Moragues-Faus &
Morgan, 2015). Development of the policy was led
by the city Environment Department in collaboration
with several other city government departments, and
in consultation with relevant stakeholders including
NGOs, farmers, unions, schools and caterers. The
policy used the ‘S.M.A.R.T’ model developed by
Stockholm’s Institute of Public Health for healthy
and environmentally friendly diets and prioritised
ethical procurement in line with Malmö’s commitment
to become a Fair Trade City in 2006. It also called
for food councils or similar to be established in
each organisation where meals would be served, to
enable consumers to have a voice. By 2021, meals
were 70% organic and GHG emissions had been
reduced by 30%.3
Regional governance inherently requires collaborative
approaches to addressing shared problems, and may
present an opportunity to strengthen food systems
governance and its contribution to the environmental
agenda, by addressing this ‘missing middle’ (Thow et al., how adaptive governance approaches often emerge
2022). Food and nutrition security are often part of the first through informal practices, which may then be
agendas of regional bodies such as ASEAN, ECOWAS formalised into policy and practice; however, pathways
and SADC, but they tend not to take integrative
approaches to governance (Guijt, de Steenhuijsen
Piters and Smaling, 2021). An example of change
in a positive direction is the EU’s launch of the Farm
to Fork (F2F) strategy, the clearest indication from a
major regional body of its commitment to an integrated, bridging communities and the municipality, leadership,
systemic approach to food systems transformation.
The F2F strategy explicitly aims to tackle environmental aspects of integrative governance — a good example
issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss and
food loss and waste. Whereas earlier EU governance
structures had been criticised as inappropriate for
addressing the complexity of food systems challenges,
the F2F strategy explicitly calls for policy integration
and a joined-up approach including political, financial
and technological enablers (De Schutter, Jacobs and
Clément, 2020; Bazzan, Daugbjerg and Tosun, 2022).
2.2 Adaptive capacity
Adaptive governance is a key concept in the literature
on social-ecological systems, and refers to the need
to increase their resilience, by improving their capacity
to address uncertainty and complexity associated with
system changes, including environmental changes
(Hospes and Brons, 2016; Visseren-Hamakers et al.,
2021). It is thought to be one of the main ways in which
food systems governance could be strengthened, in
order to cope with environmental threats and better
contribute to positive environmental outcomes (Hospes
and Brons, 2016). The capacity to respond and adapt
to ecological change is central to natural resource and
ecosystem management by Indigenous Peoples and
local communities, and therefore particularly relevant to
food production and local food systems (Schultz et al.,
2015; Berkes, 2017; Visseren-Hamakers et al., 2021).
There are few documented examples demonstrating
how adaptive food systems governance can deliver
improved environmental outcomes, particularly in the
global South (Hospes and Brons, 2016). In the Solomon
Islands, some adaptive governance principles were
institutionalised through the Fisheries Management Act
(2015), which formally incorporated local communities
and their practices into national fisheries management
(Barange et al., no date). This example illustrates
to formalisation depend on local, national and supra-
national legal systems and governing norms. The work
of the Toronto Food Policy Council on community
food initiatives also features principles of adaptive
governance which have helped to build resilience (e.g.,
and supporting self-organisation) as well as several
of how different governance approaches are used in
combination (see Box 6).

2
The city defines ‘organic’ food as that produced without chemical pesticides and artificial fertilizer, and fish with environmental certification (eg MSC label), so
this objective targets both pollution and biodiversity.
3
https://malmo.se/download/18.d8bc6b31373089f7d9800018573/1491301724605/Foodpolicy_Malmo.pdf

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