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Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M The COVID-19 pandemic unveiled the fragility of food sovereignty in cities and confirmed the close connection urban dwellers have with food. Although the pandemic was not responsible for a systemic failure, it suggested how citizens would accept and indeed support a transition toward more localized food production systems. As this attitudinal shift is aligned with the sustainability literature, this work aims to explore the tools and actions needed for a policy framework transformation that recognizes the multiple benefits of food systems, while considering local needs and circumstances. This perspective paper reviews the trends in production and consumption, and systematizes several impacts emerged across European food systems in response to the first wave of pandemic emergency, with the final aim of identifying challenges and future strategies for research and innovation toward the creation of resilient and sustainable city/region food systems. The proposal does not support a return to traditional small-scale economies that might not cope with the growing global population. It instead stands to reconstruct and upscale such connections using a "think globally act locally" mind-set, engaging local communities, and making existing and future citizen-led food system initiatives more sustainable. The work outlines a set of recommended actions for policy-makers: support innovative and localized food production, training and use of information and communication technology for food production and distribution; promote cross-pollination among city/region food systems; empower schools as agents of change in food provision and education about food systems; and support the development of assessment methodologies and the application of policy tools to ensure that the different sustainability dimensions of the food chain are considered.

Several authors speak about the menace and collapse of our present civilization. The contemporary crisis is often properly associated with the relentless growing consumption in the pursuit of personal wants in the developed countries concomitant with poverty diffusion without precedent and with highly unsustainable ecological costs. As showed by the ecological footprint, we consume already more than the carrying capacity of the Earth’s life supporting systems. Yet, policy makers are incapable to adopt coherent and comprehensive strategies to ensure a better management of global resources. De-growth of economic activity has to be considered as a valid solution to twist the fast overshoot tendency of the market-economy system. One of the founders of Ecological Economics, Nicholas Georgescu Roegen, is considered as the one who created the concept of de-growth and its main theoretician. In 1971, he published The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, which was translated into French in 1979 under the title Demain la decroissance ("tomorrow, de-growth"), launching the de-growth movements in France. The present article aims at analyzing the de-growth economics as a branch of ecological economics discipline. It presents the origin of the movement, its background and conceptualization, as well relevance in the contemporary economic crisis.