Issues in Global Food Politics and Options for Sustainable Food Consumption: A Critical Perspective

Background

In 2000, world leaders joined the United Nations in committing to meet eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)by 2015: the first of which was “to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.” In 2015, world leaders adopted a post 2015 development agenda namely the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Goal 2 of the SDGs is to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture” by 2030. Despite these robust initiatives, “an average person in North America consumes~ almost 20 times as much as a person in India or China, and 60 to 70 times more than a person in Bangladesh. It is simply impossible for the world as a whole to sustain a Western level of consumption for all’(Brundtland, 1987). Similarly, the Worldwatch Institute (2004) posits that the ever increasing consumption rate of the societies of the North are unsustainable both in terms of natural environment and in relation to the South-the 2.8 billion people are unable to meet many of their basic needs, people who subsist on less than $2 a day.

Consequently, food consumption disparity has among others resulted in ‘global food politics’ debate. Prevailing dynamics of global food politics have led to recent scholarly interest to promote sustainable food consumption and food security in order to remedy some of the fundamental problems associated with inequitable food resource use, access, power and control. FAO(2017)reports that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition 2016–2025 call on all countries and stakeholders to act together to end hunger and prevent all forms of malnutrition by 2030.