The need for systems-thinking in a time of crisis
The impacts of COVID-19 are being counted in lost GDP, hospital visits, deaths, and other things that can be readily and bluntly measured. But, as a global community, we are all collectively focused on what is unquantifiable such as human connection, community solidarity, and the importance of being nurtured by nature.
A deep rethink of the ecological basis for food production and for human health has never been more urgently required. Food systems transformation is central to this agenda given its undeniable links to climate, biodiversity loss, migration and, of course, the increased emergence of zoonotic and infectious diseases, like the coronavirus COVID-19.
Like infectious diseases before this one — Ebola, SARS, bird flu — COVID-19 is intimately connected to how our food systems operate. Although there have been attempts to attribute these outbreaks to “backyard operations” and weak links in the food chain, it’s increasingly clear that this is a broader systems issue and that the design of our food systems is not fit for purpose.
The systems we have created for what we produce, where and how, and the associated systems that govern, monitor, process, ship, and market our food enable the conditions for these health crises to emerge. They also limit our ability to both mitigate the risks and to respond in ways that are equitable and sustainable.
Back in 2017, in the Global Alliance’s Unravelling the Food-Health Nexus report, written in collaboration with IPES-Food, made the case that as food production increasingly encroaches onto formerly untouched land and ecosystems, often via deforestation, humans and domestic animals are increasingly exposed to wildlife and the diseases they carry. Equally, it showed that the prevalence of industrial feedlots, or CAFOs, the high number and density of genetically uniform animals, and the concentration of waste create a favourable environment for pathogens to spread, adapt, and reproduce at a rapid pace.
Faced with the compounding factors of climate, migration, and global trade vulnerabilities, it’s clear that business-as-usual is simply no longer an option. The future of food is at stake and the status quo is jeopardizing the efforts of many governments, businesses, farmers, civil society organizations, foundations, and others to promote short- and long-term food access, food security, food equity, human health, and a sustainable environment.
It’s no surprise that just last week the German Government tasked the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) with gathering science for policy options that both prevent pandemics and protect people and nature as two sides of the same coin. We are at a critical moment in history.
We are at a moment full of anxiety, decision-making, stock-taking, soul-searching, and needing to attend to the deep imperative to create a brighter, more beautiful future. Understandably, our instinct is to rush towards solid answers, firm metrics, and “silver bullet” solutions but now is the time to elevate universal values and maintain a systems view.
At the Global Alliance, our vision for the future of food is built on the universal values, or principles, of resilience, renewability, equity, diversity, inclusion, and interconnectedness. These principles shape our vision of the future of food, express our values, and encompass the change we want to make. We believe our food systems should be designed to produce them and we speak up with conviction for them as the most important social technologies we have to help us create a better future of food.
These principles also help us maintain a whole-systems approach. Systems-thinking is crucial at times of crisis. First, it helps us see the interconnected nature of problems and solutions through interdisciplinary research and cross-sectoral policies that reach across traditional issue silos such as health, the environment, infrastructure, agriculture, and human rights.
Second, systems-thinking assists us in expanding our understanding of short- and long-term consequences of decisions. For example, the actions taken today will have immediate impacts and resonate out decades from now in much the same way that the actions taken five years ago still influence our food systems and our ability to respond to shocks today.
Finally, thinking in systems acknowledges the many geographic and cultural contexts that shape the world’s food systems and requires the participation of a multitude of stakeholders from the farmworker in the field to the policymaker in the capital to the parents trying to ensure a healthy meal at the end of the day.
We are being challenged by COVID-19, climate change, and other global crises in a way that most of us never imagined possible. May we respond consistent with the magnitude, direction, and speed of the transformations needed by rebuilding, recreating, systems that uphold and produce the values we hold so profoundly — even if we’re only just rediscovering them and learning how to live into them.
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