Chapter Four

Natural Resources and Environment

Governance for Nature-Positive Food Systems

Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Claudia Ringler, Wei Zhang, and Channing Arndt

The pandemic has been a wake-up call for creating integrated nature-positive food systems to restore and maintain the ecosystems that support sustainable food production.

KEY FINDINGS

COVID-19 has brought home the necessity of better integration of natural resources and ecosystems with human food systems to increase the resilience, health, and sustainability of food systems.
Environmental degradation and climate change, in which food systems play a prominent role, are likely to increase the frequency and severity of natural disasters and may increase future pandemics, both of which cause shocks to food and health systems.
Common agricultural practices often degrade ecosystem services such as soil fertility and natural pest control, and can contribute to greater reliance on external inputs with potential for further damage.

Poor people are heavily dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods and are often most severely affected by environmental shocks and resource depletion.
The vicious cycle of unsustainable resource use and environmental degradation must be replaced with a virtuous cycle of healthier food and ecosystems using approaches that improve outcomes for humans and nature.
National laws and institutions, plus local formal and informal institutions and norms about respecting (or exploiting) nature, shape how people interact with the natural resource base and thus the outcomes for food and natural systems.

KEY RECOMMENDATIONS

Protect environmental health to reduce the likelihood of emergent zoonotic diseases and natural disasters.
Foster an integrated approach by thinking in terms of “eco-agri-food systems” that encompass natural resources and ecosystem services as part of food system policies and institutions.
Strive for “nature-positive” food systems that maintain or even restore ecosystems and the natural resources and ecosystem services on which we all depend for our food.

Assess how laws, institutions, and mindsets affect ecosystem functions to help identify and implement effective incentives — from regulation to market-based and normative incentives — for sustainable, nature-positive food systems.
Tap local knowledge and goals through participatory processes and develop multistakeholder platforms to support effective, inclusive governance.
Promote landscape- and watershed-level governance to maintain complex multifunctional landscapes that increase ecosystem services.

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