How can diverse national food and land-use priorities be reconciled with global sustainability targets? Lessons from the FABLE initiative
Aline Mosnier, Guido Schmidt‐Traub, Michael Obersteiner, Sarah K. Jones, Valeria Javalera-Rincon, Fabrice DeClerck, Marcus J. Thomson, Frank Sperling, Paula A. Harrison, Katya Pérez-Guzmán, Gordon C. McCord, Javier Navarro Garcia, Raymundo Marcos-Martínez, Grace C. Wu, Jordan Poncet, Clara Douzal, Jan Steinhauser, Adrián Monjeau, Federico Frank, Heikki Lehtonen, Janne Rämö, Nicholas Leach, Charlotte E. González-Abraham, Ranjan Ghosh, Chandan Kumar Jha, Vartika Singh, Zhaohai Bai, Xinpeng Jin, Lin Ma, Anton Strokov, Vladimir Potashnikоv, Fernando Orduña-Cabrera, Rudolf Neubauer, Maria Diaz, Liviu Penescu, Efraín Domínguez, John Chavarro, Andres Pena, Shyam Kumar Basnet, Ingo Fetzer, Justin S. Baker, Hisham Zerriffi, René Reyes Gallardo, Brett A. Bryan, Michalis Hadjikakou, Hermann Lotze‐Campen, Miodrag Stevanović, Alison Smith, Wanderson Santos Costa, A. H. F. Habiburrachman, Gito Immanuel, Odirilwe Selomane, Anne Sophie Daloz, Robbie M. Andrew, Bob van Oort, Dative Imanirareba, Kiflu Gedefe Molla, Firew Bekele Woldeyes, Aline C. Soterroni, Marluce Scarabello, Fernando M. Ramos, Rizaldi Boer, Nurul L. Winarni, Jatna Supriatna, Wai Sern Low, Andrew Chiah Howe Fan, François Xavier Naramabuye, Fidèle Niyitanga, Marcela Olguín, Alexander Popp, Livia Rasche, H. Charles J. Godfray, Jim W. Hall, Mike Grundy, Xiaoxi Wang
Abstract
Abstract There is an urgent need for countries to transition their national food and land-use systems toward food and nutritional security, climate stability, and environmental integrity. How can countries satisfy their demands while jointly delivering the required transformative change to achieve global sustainability targets? Here, we present a collaborative approach developed with the FABLE—Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land, and Energy—Consortium to reconcile both global and national elements for developing national food and land-use system pathways. This approach includes three key features: (1) global targets, (2) country-driven multi-objective pathways, and (3) multiple iterations of pathway refinement informed by both national and international impacts. This approach strengthens policy coherence and highlights where greater national and international ambition is needed to achieve global goals (e.g., the SDGs). We discuss how this could be used to support future climate and biodiversity negotiations and what further developments would be needed.