Papers by Francesca Allievi
Journal of Cleaner Production, 2015
The sustainability challenges that the food system is facing are ever increasing. The traditional... more The sustainability challenges that the food system is facing are ever increasing. The traditional approach to monitoring these changes considers economic, societal and environmental sustainability. A strong case has been made, however, that a fourth dimension, ethical, should also be considered. Conventionally, two main strategies have been used to assess the improvements in sustainability: efficiency and sufficiency. Efficiency is usually linked with technological improvements, and sufficiency is connected with a reduction in production or consumption. We introduce a third strategy to the analysis; namely consistency that is related mainly to the ethical dimension of sustainability. Trends of the indicators related to the three strategies are calculated on both a global and regional scale from 1962 to 2009. Efficiency (measured as land requirement for animal products) has increased by about 13 percent globally, sufficiency (measured as the amount of meat consumed) has declined by 91 percent and consistency (measured as the number of animals slaughtered) has declined by 264 percent. In addition, convergence analysis emphasizes that industrialized and developing countries are moving towards similar patterns of animal products consumption. Such results suggest that measures should be taken to develop a food system that is not only efficient, but also ethically just.
Sustainable gastronomy education to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): supporting soft skills development and monitoring changes in students’ behaviour
eucen Studies eJournal of University Lifelong Learning, 2019
Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals Through Sustainable Food Systems, 2019
Current food systems are in need of profound changes. The number of hungry people recently rose t... more Current food systems are in need of profound changes. The number of hungry people recently rose to over 820 million due to climate-related conflicts and displacement. Two billion people in the world are overweight or obese and are at risk of the diseases related to over-consumption of food, an issue that affects both the developed and developing world. The food sector operates—and depends on—a natural environment profoundly under stress and faces increasing competition for its resources between different sectors. Food is the largest freshwater user, accounts for one third of GhG emissions and is responsible for land degradation, biodiversity loss and pollution. Sustainable food systems are at the core of the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations, signed by 193 countries in 2015, as food is directly or indirectly connected to all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Against this context, the present chapter outlines the main challenges that the global food system currently faces in ...
The Role of Youth in Increasing Awareness of Food Security and Sustainability
Youth plays an important role in the multifaceted challenges that global food systems face. Most ... more Youth plays an important role in the multifaceted challenges that global food systems face. Most of the education currently offered has little room for interdisciplinarity and soft skills, and focuses on knowledge-based single disciplines. We recommend that education is increasingly complemented with non-formal approaches as experiential-based teaching and learning can be key to give youth the necessary skills to handle the complexity of the food system. Youth organizing practices such as non-formal education and cross-sectoral collaboration greatly enhance in students the sense of global citizenship, a feeling of belonging to a broader community and to act in ways that increase awareness of food security and sustainability in society.
4 were to be introduced throughout the region, there would be a much greater prospect for biodive... more 4 were to be introduced throughout the region, there would be a much greater prospect for biodiversity conservation. The second part of the analysis was carried out as a review of existing food policies and dietary guidelines worldwide, including a literature review and data available from the FAO database. A semi-structured questionnaire was also used to assess the potential role of academia in fostering the change towards more sustainable diets. The review showed that awareness and policy action concerning the impact of meat consumption on environmental resources is relatively scarce. It can be argued that this general lack of policies and supporting guidelines related to sustainable diets hinders a more consistent awareness in civil society concerning the relevance and urgency of this matter: as earlier research has shown, currently, the majority of people still struggle to see the connection between the reduction of individual meat consumption levels and global environmental ben...
Challenges of Youth Involvement in Sustainable Food Systems: Lessons Learned from the Case of Farmers’ Value Network Embeddedness in Ugandan Multi-stakeholder Platforms
Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals Through Sustainable Food Systems, 2019
This chapter aims at investigating which are the persisting challenges faced by youth when playin... more This chapter aims at investigating which are the persisting challenges faced by youth when playing a role in shaping a more sustainable food system. To do so, it presents evidence from a case study set in Ugandan coffee multi-statakeholder platforms (MSPs), which offers a local, contextualized perspective to this global issue. Building upon the notion of value networks, we analyse how younger farmers’ embeddedness in value networks relates to their potential to innovate towards more sustainable food systems. Empirical findings first highlight that younger farmers have significantly lower dimensions of value network embeddedness relative to older ones. Second, related to the limited value network embeddedness in a vicious circle, they own smaller farms in more remote areas from the markets and there engage less in collective action than older farmers. Third, their limited value network embeddedness directly constraints their innovation potential. These findings suggest that, in the c...
Sustainability
The Amazon biome occupies 60% of Brazilian territory, configured as a complex metabolism due to i... more The Amazon biome occupies 60% of Brazilian territory, configured as a complex metabolism due to its diversity and the history of occupation by humans in the exploitation of its services. The Amazon nut tree (Bertholletia excelsa) occurs in the entire Amazon biome, which is essential for its sustainability. The Amazon nut production chain in the northwest of the State of Mato Grosso presents itself as a relevant case of analysis of the extractive activity of non-timber forest products (NTFP). Based on interpretative assumptions, the multi-scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism (MuSIASEM) approach is applied to the data collected in a farmers’ cooperative. The objective of this study was to analyze the socio-environmental metabolism of the productive chain of the Amazon nut in the northwest region of the Mato Grosso State (MT) in Brazil. As the MuSIASEM approach can generate an integrated set of indicators measured at different scales and dimensions of analysis...
Fostering empathy towards effective sustainability teaching: from the Food Sustainability Index educational toolkit to a new pedagogical model
Handbook on Teaching and Learning for Sustainable Development, 2021
Teaching sustainability in higher education is far from being an easy task. The idea of sustainab... more Teaching sustainability in higher education is far from being an easy task. The idea of sustainability itself risks remaining an abstract and out-of-reach concept unless it is taught to develop practical solutions. Lecturers approaching sustainability in higher education, often do not have the overall knowledge and resources to effectively present the topic to their students. This chapter presents the principles needed to develop a new pedagogy for sustainability accounting for the role of empathy. The teaching approach is developed starting from the use of the Food Sustainability Index (FSI) as an educational tool – named FSI Edu – for teaching food sustainability in higher education settings. FSI assesses food sustainability adopting a systematic approach and showing the complexity of food sustainability issues. After a theoretical introduction, the chapter describes two experiments based on the FSI Edu at the Bachelor and Master Degree level. These experiments built the starting ...
Ecological Indicators
Aquarium pets release is an important vector for invasive species establishment in freshwater eco... more Aquarium pets release is an important vector for invasive species establishment in freshwater ecosystems. Here the perceptions and risk behaviors associated to this vector were evaluated using a survey. Portuguese aquarium hobbyists were interviewed through an on-line survey (Google forms) publicized in 9 web sites connected to this hobby (Facebook pages and internet forums). A Pet Propagule Pressure index (PPP), congregating information regarding pet's popularity and electivity for discharge, was developed and applied in this study, so that relative comparisons can be made among different pet types (taxa). Additionally, non-metric Multidimensional Scaling (nMDS) was applied to pet owner's data to identify indicator factors associated with risk behaviors and impacts' awareness. Results indicated that aquarium pet owners usually only have one pet type, most commonly fish or turtles. Only 8% of the owners admit having discharged pets, being more commonly reported the release of only one pet. This risk behavior is connected mainly to the excessive growth of the pet and consequently lack of space in the aquariums. Pet's discharge occurs until 100 km of distance from owner's homes, being very common at distances lower than 1 km. The PPP index developed in this study, indicates the pet types with higher risk of discharge were the turtles and the fishes. Pet owner's awareness regarding the pet discharges impacts in the environment seems to be lower than other risk groups connected to biological invasions in freshwaters, namely anglers. Pet owners most aware of these impacts were associated to higher education levels and higher experience on this hobby. Our study highlights the needs for more environmental education on particular social groups within aquarium pets' owners, namely those that have started this activity or have lower education levels, to decrease the biological invasion risks associated to this hobby. Additionally, our findings regarding the patterns and drivers of discharge action itself are useful to model risk invasion, as well as for detection, management and control of these species.
Corrigendum to ‘Global Meat Consumption Trends and Local Deforestation in Madre de Dios: Assessing Land Use Changes and Other Environmental Impacts’
Procedia Engineering, 2015
Global Meat Consumption Trends and Local Deforestation in Madre de Dios: Assessing Land Use Changes and other Environmental Impacts
Procedia Engineering, 2015
Abstract Meat consumption is becoming one of the most relevant sectors in terms of environmental ... more Abstract Meat consumption is becoming one of the most relevant sectors in terms of environmental impacts globally. In the Brazilian Amazon the effects of this process are seen in the ongoing deforestation and land-use change (about 65% of deforestation can be linked to cattle ranching). One of the main causes of this trend is the increased efficiency of the transport infrastructure: along both sides of the Brazilian Inter-Oceanic highway, about 50 km of rainforest have been converted to cattle ranching. In 2011 the Inter-Oceanic highway was finalized also on the Peruvian side: the region of Madre de Dios is neighboring the Brazilian Amazon, therefore the risk is that this area will undergo the same kind of development. The objective of this analysis is to highlight the contribution of global meat demand trend as cause of land use change and deforestation in the Madre de Dios region. This focus has been chosen since, nowadays, the magnitude of cattle ranching activities is hidden by more evident and damaging activities (e.g., gold mining), and its near-future effects risk to be underestimated. By starting with investigating the preliminary signals of cattle ranching contribution to the local deforestation process, this analysis will serve as basis for more comprehensive future works on local data, including monitoring campaigns of local biodiversity and GHG emissions. Land-use change is, thus, analyzed through FAO data and also through data acquired with remote sensing carried out within other projects. Meat consumption and production outcomes are obtained from the FAOSTAT database. By integrating trends in the regional meat consumption with the emerging trading effects, which are incremented by the new highway, it is possible to highlight the risk that the global convergence in meat consumption trends can locally influence the deforestation in Madre de Dios.
Investigating the existence of an ‘Animal Kuznets curve’ in the EU-15 countries
Climate change and sustainable development, 2012
The ‘Environmental Kuznets Curve’ is a hypothesis, according to which environmental burden rises ... more The ‘Environmental Kuznets Curve’ is a hypothesis, according to which environmental burden rises when the income levels are low, but degradation starts to lower when income levels continue to rise. This approach has been utilized also to hypothesize that animal welfare and usage of animals by humans follow a similar trend. In this article meat consumption per capita is examined in the EU-15 context by comparing it with income levels. It was found that meat consumption rises with income in lower income levels but this growth gradually stabilizes. When the amount of animals slaughtered per capita was analyzed it was observed that with income levels of 11,000 US$, 19,000 US$ and 23,000 US$ per capita the amount of animals slaughtered per capita was equal to 6.8, 11.0 and 9.4 respectively. This indicates that the amounts of slaughter do indeed follow the trend hypothesized by the Kuznets curve. However the results should be interpreted with caution.
Meat consumption and production - analysis of efficiency, sufficiency and consistency of global trends
Journal of Cleaner Production
The sustainability challenges that the food system is facing are ever increasing. The traditional... more The sustainability challenges that the food system is facing are ever increasing. The traditional approach to monitoring these changes considers economic, societal and environmental sustainability. A strong case has been made, however, that a fourth dimension, ethical, should also be considered. Conventionally, two main strategies have been used to assess the improvements in sustainability: efficiency and sufficiency. Efficiency is usually linked with technological improvements, and sufficiency is connected with a reduction in production or consumption. We introduce a third strategy to the analysis; namely consistency that is related mainly to the ethical dimension of sustainability. Trends of the indicators related to the three strategies are calculated on both a global and regional scale from 1962 to 2009. Efficiency (measured as land requirement for animal products) has increased by about 13 percent globally, sufficiency (measured as the a mount of meat consumed) has declined by ...
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Papers by Francesca Allievi