Land is central to many critical needs, from food security and climate change to cleaner air and water. How can these competing demands be reconciled?

The food system is locked in a vicious circle of increasing production, environmental degradation and rising public health costs. Yields have plateaued but demand is rising while diet is becoming progressively more unhealthy and unsustainable. Rob Bailey and Bernice Lee call on the need for a clear alternative vision to break this vicious circle.

Sustainable and healthy diets could bring widespread environmental and public health benefits. Laura Wellesley outlines the strategies and interventions required to sustainably meet the nutritional needs of a growing global population.

Agriculture must be radically transformed for environmental, food and nutrition security to be reconciled. Richard King outlines some of the existing and emerging opportunities to shift production towards more sustainable and equitable outcomes. 

Natural infrastructure restoration and management can be a physically effective and cost-efficient way to enhance food production and deliver climate and nutrition security. Ana Yang outlines three imperatives necessary for achieving this.

The workshop explored the role of negative emissions, particularly bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), in achieving the UNFCCC Paris Agreement goals. Significant deployment of BECCS is common to most Paris-compliant emissions reduction pathways, but raises important questions for policymakers.

At this workshop leading experts discussed what action across government, business and civil society can steer us towards healthy and sustainable diets. Spanning technologies, policies and actors, an action agenda that can unlock ambition, increase resources and continue innovation to take steps towards a healthy and sustainable diet was identified.

The workshop explored knowledge gaps and priorities to accelerate investment and action on soil organic carbon storage and sequestration. Decision-makers from multiple sectors, with global representation, identified constraints and solutions for scaling up investment in soil organic carbon in the context of climate-change mitigation.

The dialogue explored tools to shift societal preferences and support more sustainable consumption behaviours. It analysed lessons from experiences of ‘nudging’ and other efforts in policy areas such as food, energy, buildings and infrastructure, and identified promising opportunities where interventions that target demand-side shifts could deliver more sustainable outcomes. Participants were from industry, government, international organizations, NGOs, academia, foundations and think tanks.

Land Economy for Sustainability Dialogue Series This first dialogue took place in early 2017. It explored key elements for a scalable strategy for reducing land-based emissions, drawing on lessons learnt from the past decade on the strategic transformation of the energy sector. It also discussed some of the critical ‘no regret’ interventions that could be scaled up immediately, and identified levers needed to create the preconditions for disruptive change beyond 2030.

Hailed as a major disruptor to today’s livestock industry, companies producing innovative meat analogues are blurring the line between disruption and business-as-usual, writes Laura Wellesley.