Understanding complex system change for a sustainable food system
Kuokkanen, Anna (2016-12-14)
Väitöskirja
Kuokkanen, Anna
14.12.2016
Lappeenranta University of Technology
Acta Universitatis Lappeenrantaensis
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-335-039-7
https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-335-039-7
Tiivistelmä
This thesis investigates a complex system change for navigating food systems towards
sustainability. The thesis employs interdisciplinary theoretical framework, grounded in
the dynamics of a complex adaptive system. In particular, the two most prominent
research directions, social-ecological-system research and socio-technical-system
research, are adopted for the generation of analytic and normative research aims. Four
distinct but complimentary research questions are raised in order to gain more
comprehensive understanding of sustainability change in the food system.
The results highlight the role of food systems in disrupting ecosystem services, namely
nutrient cycles, on both global and local scales. Critical planetary thresholds have been
transgressed so significantly that they set more stringent limits to future food security
than availability of resources and population growth. Radical and simultaneous
transformations across the food systems are imperative, for single shifts, such as
preventing all food waste and losses and adopting a vegan diet across the globe, alone
are not sufficient to bridge the gap and maintain food security for all. Yet tentative and
highly controversial, planetary boundaries operationalize ecosystem service based
approach to sustainability and the existence of limits to environment’s functions critical
to human wellbeing.
Including temporal and bottom-up assessment of nutrient boundaries provides important
insights about the cross-scale dynamics in social-ecological systems that are dismissed
if only global scale is considered. Firstly, the local boundaries in Finland are more
stringer than the global boundaries due to the sensitivity of the Baltic Sea. Secondly,
historically cumulated nutrient use in Finland and Ethiopia demonstrate the disparity of
transgressing nutrient boundaries and the striking inequality in access to nutrients. In
Finland nutrient boundaries are transgressed due to high inflow of nutrients, while in
Ethiopia they are transgressed due to high outflow of nutrients due to erosion. Thus
bridging the current sustainability gap requires a simultaneous reduction of inequality
and redistribution of productive assets, not only virgin nutrients but also those that have
accumulated in Finnish soils and water bodies.
Socio-technical approach to sustainability change highlights that regime transition is
often constrained by systemic resistance due to the prevalence of lock-in dynamics.
Food system locking into unsustainable nutrient economy emerges through mutually
reinforcing increasing returns processes in production, consumption and institutions. This calls for active and deliberate regime destabilisation, not least by means of food
system policy, bridging consumption to production, and thus involving those actors and
practices that are the most influential at present. Simultaneously though, caution of
creating and enabling the situations for new lock-ins is warranted. Furthermore,
sustainability transitions can be linked to the broader policy level by analysis of market,
structural and transformational failures. Stimulation of system innovation in the food
system requires attention foremost at the prevailing structures and practices through reassessing
several sectoral policies, at least agriculture, environment, energy and waste
policies, and their coherence and directionality. Policies cutting across several sectors
are essential, but they require not only changes in institutions but also meaningful
interaction and cooperation.
sustainability. The thesis employs interdisciplinary theoretical framework, grounded in
the dynamics of a complex adaptive system. In particular, the two most prominent
research directions, social-ecological-system research and socio-technical-system
research, are adopted for the generation of analytic and normative research aims. Four
distinct but complimentary research questions are raised in order to gain more
comprehensive understanding of sustainability change in the food system.
The results highlight the role of food systems in disrupting ecosystem services, namely
nutrient cycles, on both global and local scales. Critical planetary thresholds have been
transgressed so significantly that they set more stringent limits to future food security
than availability of resources and population growth. Radical and simultaneous
transformations across the food systems are imperative, for single shifts, such as
preventing all food waste and losses and adopting a vegan diet across the globe, alone
are not sufficient to bridge the gap and maintain food security for all. Yet tentative and
highly controversial, planetary boundaries operationalize ecosystem service based
approach to sustainability and the existence of limits to environment’s functions critical
to human wellbeing.
Including temporal and bottom-up assessment of nutrient boundaries provides important
insights about the cross-scale dynamics in social-ecological systems that are dismissed
if only global scale is considered. Firstly, the local boundaries in Finland are more
stringer than the global boundaries due to the sensitivity of the Baltic Sea. Secondly,
historically cumulated nutrient use in Finland and Ethiopia demonstrate the disparity of
transgressing nutrient boundaries and the striking inequality in access to nutrients. In
Finland nutrient boundaries are transgressed due to high inflow of nutrients, while in
Ethiopia they are transgressed due to high outflow of nutrients due to erosion. Thus
bridging the current sustainability gap requires a simultaneous reduction of inequality
and redistribution of productive assets, not only virgin nutrients but also those that have
accumulated in Finnish soils and water bodies.
Socio-technical approach to sustainability change highlights that regime transition is
often constrained by systemic resistance due to the prevalence of lock-in dynamics.
Food system locking into unsustainable nutrient economy emerges through mutually
reinforcing increasing returns processes in production, consumption and institutions. This calls for active and deliberate regime destabilisation, not least by means of food
system policy, bridging consumption to production, and thus involving those actors and
practices that are the most influential at present. Simultaneously though, caution of
creating and enabling the situations for new lock-ins is warranted. Furthermore,
sustainability transitions can be linked to the broader policy level by analysis of market,
structural and transformational failures. Stimulation of system innovation in the food
system requires attention foremost at the prevailing structures and practices through reassessing
several sectoral policies, at least agriculture, environment, energy and waste
policies, and their coherence and directionality. Policies cutting across several sectors
are essential, but they require not only changes in institutions but also meaningful
interaction and cooperation.
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