FOOD SYSTEMS GOVERNANCE AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL AGENDA

BOX 4. TAKING INSPIRATION FROM TRANSFORMATIVE ENVIRONMENTAL

GOVERNANCE
Building on findings of the Global Assessment • Integrating sustainability into other sectors
of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform (e.g. through environmental policy integration
on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES, and mainstreaming).
2019a), transformative environmental governance
2. Inclusive governance empowers people who
has been defined as governance that enables
are implicated in transformative change, but
transformative change by tackling the indirect drivers
whose interests are not being served by existing
of unsustainability and combining approaches in four
governance arrangements.
domains (Chaffin et al., 2016):
3. Adaptive governance enables feedback
1. Integrative governance ensures that ‘solutions
gained over time to be incorporated into the
have sustainable impacts at other scales, on other
understanding of transformative change, so that
issues, and in other places and sectors’. There are
governance can evolve with learning.
three broad approaches, which need to be used
together to be truly transformative: 4. Pluralist or informed governance recognises and
incorporates knowledge from different systems
• Combining instruments in ‘smart governance
of knowledge production, such as scientific
mixes’ to address indirect drivers of a
communities and indigenous communities.
sustainability challenge.
• Coordinating across sectors, issues, governance
levels and places (including through multi-
level governance).

2.1 Integration and An example of multi-level food systems governance

which is contributing to positive environmental
collaboration outcomes, as well as improved nutrition, is Odisha’s
Gram Panchayat tank co-management approach, which
Food systems involve many different actors and span relies on coordination across multiple sectors and levels
multiple levels of governance — such as sub-national, of government and devolves resource management
national and international — as well as different power to local women’s groups (WorldFish, 2022).
sectors — such as agriculture and fisheries, retail, Another example is the Nairobi Water Fund, an
public health and nutrition (Wilkes, 2022a). However, integrated landscape governance initiative that
not all governance arrangements or decision-making coordinates food production with sustainable use and
processes are necessarily integrated across these levels management of Kenya’s Upper Tana watershed (Arndt
and sectors (Guijt, de Steenhuijsen Piters and Smaling, et al., 2021). Malmo’s approach to sustainable food
2021; Vignola, Oosterveer and Béné, 2021). procurement also demonstrates coordination across
sectors and outcomes, as well as commitment to
Effective governance and sustainable transformation
inclusivity (Box 5).
of food systems is increasingly seen to necessitate
an arrangement that addresses these multi-level Coordination between multiple governing institutions
dynamics, also known as ‘multi-level governance’. The working on a particular issue can support better
Special Report on Climate Change and Land by the decision-making and more effective, equitable and
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) environmentally sustainable governance (Ostrom, 2010;
draws attention to the fact that ‘land and food sectors Baldwin et al., 2016). Although there are policy options
face particular challenges of institutional fragmentation’, at each stage of the food system that can promote
including a lack of cross-scale coordination and linkages between environmental sustainability and other
policy integration. The authors suggest that increased objectives such as nutrition and health, the collaboration
collaboration with public health, environment, energy between sectors required to implement them is still rare
and other sectors could lead to co-benefits, including (Hospes and Brons, 2016; Ruben et al., 2021).
for environment and health (Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, 2022).

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