Introduction to Food Security and Sustainability: Knowledge, Communication, Politics

The Task Force on Environment, Sustainability and Climate (TFESC) of Academia Europaea investigates ways of enhancing global science policy communication on the topic of food security and sustainability. This Focus reports the initial outcome of this investigation in the form of three articles. First, given the complexity of the link between food security and sustainability, and in particular the two-way relation between the impact of food production on sustainability, on the one side, and of ecological degradation on food security, on the other, we explored the ways in which new Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) can provide more comprehensive knowledge on the question. Second, even though knowledge and awareness of the link between food security and sustainability have grown, this has by and large not yet translated into significant transformations of attitudes and actions by consumers. In this light, we analysed the implications for communication strategies. Acknowledging the necessity of global coordinated action, third, we analysed the experience of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is often hailed as a model for a global science–policy interface that provides the necessary link between producers of relevant scholarly knowledge and office-holding policymakers. This introduction explains the background to the TFESC investigation and outlines the reasoning in the three following articles.