Ambitious food system interventions required to mitigate the risk of exceeding Earth’s environmental limits
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Date
2025-09-19
Publication Type
Journal Article
ETH Bibliography
yes
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Abstract
Transforming the global food system is essential to avoid exceeding Earth’s environmental limits. A robust evidence base is crucial to assess the scale and combination of interventions required for a sustainable transformation. We developed a risk assessment framework, underpinned by an evidence synthesis of global food system modeling studies, to quantify the potential of individual and combined interventions to mitigate the risk of exceeding global environmental limits for agricultural area, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, surface water flows, and nutrient cycles by 2050. GHG emissions and nutrient cycles are the most difficult limits to avoid exceeding and are conditional on shifts toward diets with a low proportion of animal-source foods; steep reductions in emissions intensity; substantial improvements in nutrient management, feed-conversion ratios, and crop yields; and efforts to limit overconsumption and food waste. Ambitious actions across the global food system are needed to ensure the required level of risk mitigation.
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Publication status
published
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Book title
Journal / series
Volume
8 (9)
Pages / Article No.
101351
Publisher
Cell Press
Event
Edition / version
Methods
Software
Geographic location
Date collected
Date created
Subject
food system intervention; sustainable agriculture; planetary boundaries; Earth-system boundaries; environmental limits; sustainable diet; meta-analysis; meta-regression; risk assessment; scenario analysis
Organisational unit
03732 - Hellweg, Stefanie / Hellweg, Stefanie