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The agri-food system is facing a range of social-ecological threats, many of which are caused and amplified by industrial agriculture. In response, numerous sustainable agriculture narratives have emerged, proposing solutions to the challenges facing the agri-food system. One such narrative that has recently risen to prominence is regenerative agriculture. However, the drivers for the rapid emergence of regenerative agriculture are not well understood. Furthermore, its transformative potential for supporting a more sustainable agri-food system is underexplored. Through a genealogical analysis of four prominent sustainable agriculture narratives; organic agriculture, conservation agriculture, sustainable intensification, and agroecology; we consider how regenerative agriculture’s growing momentum can be contextualised within existing narratives and explore the implications this might have for its transformative potential. This analysis reveals that the genealogies of these sustainable agriculture narratives have led to a number of contestations and complementarities which have coalesced to drive the emergence of regenerative agriculture. We also find that, in contrast to agroecology, regenerative agriculture shares with other Global North narratives a limited scope for offering transformative pathways for agricultural production. This is largely due to their inadequate consideration of power and equity issues in the agri-food system. We argue that regenerative agriculture therefore risks inhibiting deeper agri-food system transformations that address both social and ecological challenges and is not the unifying sustainable agriculture narrative it claims to be. Nonetheless, regenerative agriculture could contribute towards a broader plurality of sustainable agriculture narratives that collectively might enable a transformation to a more sustainable, diverse, and just agri-food system.

To halt further destruction of the biosphere, most people and societies around the globe need to transform their relationships with nature. The internationally agreed vision under the Convention of Biological Diversity—Living in harmony with nature—is that “By 2050, biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people”. In this context, there are a variety of debates between alternative perspectives on how to achieve this vision. Yet, scenarios and models that are able to explore these debates in the context of “living in harmony with nature” have not been widely developed. To address this gap, the Nature Futures Framework has been developed to catalyse the development of new scenarios and models that embrace a plurality of perspectives on desirable futures for nature and people. In this paper, members of the IPBES task force on scenarios and models provide an example of how the Nature Futures Framework can be implemented for the development of illustrative narratives representing a diversity of desirable nature futures: information that can be used to assess and develop scenarios and models whilst acknowledging the underpinning value perspectives on nature. Here, the term illustrative reflects the multiple ways in which desired nature futures can be captured by these narratives. In addition, to explore the interdependence between narratives, and therefore their potential to be translated into scenarios and models, the six narratives developed here were assessed around three areas of the transformative change debate, specifically, (1) land sparing vs. land sharing, (2) Half Earth vs. Whole Earth conservation, and (3) green growth vs. post-growth economic development. The paper concludes with an assessment of how the Nature Futures Framework could be used to assist in developing and articulating transformative pathways towards desirable nature futures.

Modern agriculture is underpinned by a colonial, industrial and productivist discourse. Agricultural practices inspired by this discourse have fed billions but degraded socio-ecological systems. Regenerative agriculture (RA) is a prominent alternative seeking to transform food production and repair ecosystems. This paper proposes that RA discourse is supported by a shared storyline binding diverse actors and discourses together—a discourse coalition. Consequently, multiple discourses contribute to the over-arching discourse of RA. A discourse analysis was conducted on texts from ninety-six organisations and complimented by twenty-two interviews in Australia and the USA. This analysis identified nine discourses contributing to RA discourse: Restoration for Profit; Big Picture Holism; Regenerative Organic; Regrarian Permaculture; Regenerative Cultures; Deep Holism; First Nations; Agroecology and Food Sovereignty; and Subtle Energies. This paper describes and examines these component discourses and discusses tensions that may make RA vulnerable to co-optation and greenwashing, diluting its transformative potential.

Agriculture occupies 38% of the planet’s terrestrial surface, using 70% of freshwater resources. Its modern practice is dominated by an industrial–productivist discourse, which has contributed to the simplification and degradation of human and ecological systems. As such, agricultural transformation is essential for creating more sustainable food systems. This paper focuses on discursive change. A prominent discursive alternative to industrial–productivist agriculture is regenerative agriculture. Regenerative discourses are emergent, radically evolving and diverse. It is unclear whether they have the potential to generate the changes required to shift industrial–productivist agriculture. This paper presents a literature-based discourse analysis to illustrate key thematic characteristics of regenerative agricultural discourses. The analysis finds that such discourses: situate agricultural work within nested, complex living systems; position farms as relational, characterised by co-evolution between humans and other landscape biota; perceive the innate potential of living systems as place-sourced; maintain a transformative openness to alternative thinking and practice; believe that multiple regenerative cultures are necessary for deeply regenerative agriculture; and depart from industrialism to varying degrees. The paper concludes by reviewing three transformative opportunities for regenerative discourses—discourse coalitions, translocal organising and collective learning. Supplementary Information The online version supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10460-021-10276-0.

The emergence of gender-transformative approaches in the international development sector has ushered in a new paradigm for gender and development, refocusing on core feminist principles. This rise has paralleled the growth of transformative research and a strengthened emphasis on social transformations in the field of international development practice. Gender-transformative approaches aim to reshape gender dynamics by redistributing resources, expectations and responsibilities between women, men, and non-binary gender identities, often focusing on norms, power, and collective action. In this paper, we trace the history of gender-transformative approaches (1990 to March 2022); explore the breadth of applications in development described in both grey and academic literature; and identify five principles to guide future gender-transformative approaches with a focus on interventions. We hope that these clarifying principles will make the rich conceptual contribution of gender-transformative thinking relevant to a broad audience of researchers and practitioners and provide a basis for further academic debate and refinement.

This chapter draws on concepts that were developed and applied across other chapters in the food and nutrition security section. These concepts are then applied to the three scales set out in this handbook, being the intra-urban, in both high and low technology forms; the city and its immediate region; and cities in telecoupled relationships with distant landscapes, including those overseas. At each scale, the chapter discusses the challenges that arise in sustainably provisioning consumers with a nutritious and culturally appropriate diet. It also discusses the challenges of ensuring justice and equity outcomes for all participants in the food system, not only consumers, but producers, processors, distributors, and retailers. For each scale, the chapters look at the formal and informal institutions that regulate the flows of nutrient and materials in the food system, and how those flows could become part of an equitable circular economy. Overall, the challenge of creating a circular economy for food is seen as one of system design, and fundamental rests on what is seen as the design goal, or purpose, of a food system.

The frequency and severity of shocks to food systems is accelerating globally, exemplified by the current COVID-19 outbreak. In low- and middle-income countries, the impacts have exacerbated existing food system vulnerabilities and poverty. Governments and donors must respond quickly, but few tools are available that identify interventions to build food system resilience, or emerging opportunities for transformation. In this paper we reflect on the application of a systems-based rapid assessment which we applied across 11 Indo-Pacific countries in May-July 2020. Our approach was shaped by three design parameters: the integration of key informants' perspectives engaged remotely within the countries, applicability to diverse food systems and COVID-19 experiences across the region, and the consideration of food systems as complex systems. For the rapid assessment we adopted an analytical framework proposed by Allen and Prosperi (2016). To include a development lens, we added the analysis of vulnerable groups and their exposure, impacts, recovery potential and resilience, and pro-poor interventions. We concluded that the framework and approach facilitated integration and triangulation of disparate knowledge types and data to identify priority interventions and was sufficiently flexible to be applied across food systems, at both national, sub-national and commodity scales. The step-wise method was simple and enabled structured inquiry and reporting. Although the systems concepts appeared more easily transferrable to key informants in some countries than others, potentially transformational interventions were identified, and also some risks of maladaptation. We present a refined framework that emphasises analysis of political, economic and institutional drivers of exposure and vulnerability, the constraints that they pose for building recovery potential and resilience, and trade-offs amongst winners and losers inherent in proposed interventions.

Summary Systems thinking provides a comprehensive range of theories and methods that are useful for understanding and managing sustainability challenges. Biodiversity conservation is riddled with complex interactions between science, society and myriad interacting systems through temporal and spatial scales. This article presents a synthetic analysis of the history of systems thinking from a genealogical perspective, drawing from hard and soft systems thinking, and resilience and social-ecological systems. Using the anchor point of system leverage points and system characteristics (parameters, feedbacks, design and intent), we employ a diversity of examples to illustrate their relevance to multiple biodiversity related problems. We conclude by illustrating the opportunities for systems thinking to bridge epistemic divides with multiple biodiversity actors working towards conservation outcomes. Systems thinking can support more integrative biodiversity interventions, as they provide a pluralistic set of tools for bridging knowledges and disciplines, which can be useful to create new shared understandings of how to conserve biodiversity.

In addressing the complex challenge of ensuring food and nutrition security for a growing and rapidly urbanizing global population, we need appropriate tools for developing policies that are not only effective but sustainable and socially just. In this chapter we outline a human ecological approach that can be used by policy thinkers, managers, governments, and others to support the analysis, critique, and design of policies, programs, and services to manage problems in complex human-environment systems. At its core, the approach involves consideration of the interactions and feedbacks between the following main components of the given system: the environment; human health; policies/institutions; and cultural paradigms. While the general approach can be applied to any human-environment system, here we present the framework through the example of food and nutrition security, in particular contrasting two examples of how different paradigms can influence policy and management approaches and in turn give rise to different systems and different outcomes for both human and environmental well-being.

Context The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted global food systems. This has led to different strategies by communities, governments, and businesses involved in food systems to mitigate and adapt to the unfolding pandemic. Small Island Developing States are particularly exposed to the conflation of risks from COVID-19 disease, economic downturns, underlying climate vulnerabilities and biosecurity risks. Objective Our study aimed to identify the food systems vulnerabilities, impacts, and opportunities for supporting resilience and sustainable development in selected Pacific Island countries, Papua New Guinea, and Timor-Leste. The study focused on the impacts from the first six months of the pandemic (February–July 2020), with remote data collection and analysis done between May and July 2020. Methods We conducted 67 interviews, and triangulated information with desktop and news sources emerging at the time. We present results on the effect on smallholder livelihoods, supply chains, governance, communities and employment. Overall, the major impacts of COVID-19 have been on economies, posing risks to future food security and further hampering progress towards key Sustainable Development Goals. Results and conclusions We found that unemployment and economic contraction have been the most severe effects to date, with long-term consequences for food value chains and smallholder farmers. Disruptions to tourism, labour migration, and remittances have led to varying socio-economic impacts throughout the region. Vulnerable groups, notably women, urban poor, and youth, have been disproportionately affected by unemployment. Timor-Leste has had some social protection measures, whereas in Pacific Countries these have been varied. The lockdowns and State of Emergency initially influenced the distribution and marketing of food, but local food economies are starting to stabilise. The continued functioning of international food supply chains reduced the risk of food insecurity in high import dependent nations, notably import dependent countries like Tuvalu and Kiribati. Significance The results have significance for three recovery pathways. The first recovery pathway relates to revisiting value chains in light of restricted travel. The second recovery pathway exists through leveraging the adaptive capacities of communities to stimulate innovative agriculture that also integrates climate adaptation and nutrition. The third recovery pathway relates to addressing the structural challenges that perpetuate inequalities and poverty while finding new ways of implementing inclusive policies and research. Our study presents a set of comparative examples of managing a food system shock that can inform future systems-oriented research and policy for sustainable development.

The world has changed. Posited to be a ‘super year’ for biodiversity with various international meetings and the conclusion of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s ten-year Aichi Targets, 2020 will be remembered for very different reasons: catastrophic fires, the COVID-19 pandemic, floods, locust outbreaks, a drastic drop in oil prices and widespread food insecurity. These disruptions will exacerbate the already considerable gap between rich and poor, hitting marginalized groups — the impoverished, women, Indigenous communities and people of colour — much harder. Impacts on the environment have been mixed: carbon emissions may be down, but there are growing concerns that nature will be forgotten in the rush to rebuild devastated economies.

1.In a previous series of papers (Sutherland, Dicks, Everard, & Geneletti, 2018), we summarise the use of a range of social science methods in conservation decision‐making. Moon et al. (2019) claim that the special feature risks narrowing the scope of social science research and suggest that we presented a limited perspective on the field. They thereby criticise the special feature for not doing something that it never intended to do in the first instance. We did not claim that the list of articles covered in the special feature is a comprehensive list (which it obviously is not) and we are unclear why anyone would think it is. 2.While we consider the Moon et al. (2019) paper to be a useful contribution for conservation scientists as a supplementary paper, it serves less as a critique to the special feature. Moon et al.('s (2019) paper makes very few direct and substantive criticisms of points raised in the special feature. We respond to areas of contention referring specifically to research philosophy, bias, and data reporting. 3.Moon et al. (2019) criticise the set of papers for perpetuating an objectivist view of the world. We believe that it would be rather disconcerting for the research community if there were no social truths to discover. Rather, social science research methods conducted in specific places can be good ways of exploring how truths vary in different contexts. 4.We also note that Moon et al. (2019) completely missed the point we were trying to make about psychological biases, which are quite different to the issues associated with researcher bias highlighted by them. 5.We encourage readers to pay close attention to the use of social science methods in conservation science. We reiterate, however, that the main purpose of the special feature was to ensure that social science methodologies for decision‐making are accessible for all conservation scientists to use, regardless of disciplinary background.

Interacting human and environmental drivers influence food and nutrition security outcomes. The way food and nutrition security problems and solutions are understood by decision makers and researchers inevitably influences interventions in food systems. One novel way of capturing different and potentially competing understandings of food and nutrition security problems and solutions is transdisciplinary research. In this paper, we examine how Southeast Asian policy and research experts working in food and nutrition security frame challenges and solutions, and the implications of this understanding for their capacity to adopt initiatives from emerging transdisciplinary research in the region. We conducted a workshop with research and policy experts from four countries in Southeast Asia and used a systems based human ecology framework to capture the common understanding participants have of the main challenges in their food systems. The systems exercises revealed similarities in the dominant framing presented by researchers and policy makers, and of the respective agencies of key stakeholders. We found that formal government policy and training was commonly perceived as major drivers of change, with smallholder farmers viewed as passive recipients of knowledge. We also found there is ongoing interest in increasing productivity of key commodities, but there is critical awareness of the environmental consequences of production-oriented agriculture. These dominant understandings have implications for current regional initiatives in transdisciplinary research that seek to build farmer capacity, reduce inequality, and include different stakeholders in research and policy activities. We conclude by arguing that research agencies aspiring to inform policy interventions based on transdisciplinary processes will face challenges given the current dominant frames of food systems in the region. We show how human ecology and systems frameworks can guide transdisciplinary food systems research that aims to improve food and nutrition security.

In this commentary, we present an analysis of how COVID-19 has impacted food systems in the Pacific Islands. The Pacific Islands region is home to over 10 million people across 22 countries, with hugely diverse agricultural and fisheries systems. The analysis is based on a systems framework developed by Allen and Prosperi (2016), which covers various aspects of human ecology food systems. We synthesized material from 21 interviews, news websites, emerging literature, and parallel published assessments of COVID-19 impacts in the region. We present examples of impacts across different elements of food systems throughout the region. We then apply a systems-based analysis to illustrate how the impacts of COVID-19 on Pacific food systems create an opportunity to find innovative ways of transforming localized and regional food, and create an opportunity to building resilience to future shocks. © 2020, Society for Human Ecology. All rights reserved.

© 2019, Springer Nature B.V. Food systems are influenced by discourses held by individuals and institutions. Market oriented food security and food sovereignty are frequently presented as co-existing discourses in food systems. This paper documents how smallholder farmers embody market food security and food sovereignty discourses in their agricultural practices, and how these discourses prevent new forms of agriculture from developing given socio-political and institutional rigidity. A human ecology systems framework is used to analyse semi-structured interviews with 39 coconut producing smallholder farmers from Leyte, The Philippines. The results document how smallholders perceive market food security discourse as the main way out of food insecure situations, and thus continue to seek institutional support for maintaining a coconut based agricultural system. Farmers also perceive elements of the food sovereignty discourse, notably decision-making agency and agricultural diversification, as parallel strategies to improve their food security. The ongoing support for coconut production and inequitable access to training and knowledge in rural systems traps farmers into an agricultural system influenced by a long history of colonial institutions and social structures. The paper demonstrates that farmers are aware of the interventions required to diversify food systems towards higher value commodities, yet sovereignty is unlikely to be enabled due to maladaptive institutions and the associated access to new training and extension opportunities. The use of human ecology advances food scholarship through embedding a systems analysis into qualitative studies to reveal the influence of food discourses on food systems’ behaviour and outcomes.

© 2018, Society for Human Ecology. All rights reserved. Feeding the world sustainably requires balancing social, economic, and environmental concerns. The food systems concept guides the study of social and environmental processes that influence food and nutrition security. Human ecology conceptually offers insights into the social components of a system and its interaction with environmental change. This paper demonstrates how human ecology helps identify the dominant discourses that influence dominant social drivers in food systems. This is done through documenting the historical legacies of agricultural commodity production systems in the Philippines since Spanish colonization, and the human and ecological implications of this history. The analysis shows the presence of a maladaptive system influenced by market-oriented food security as a dominant discourse. Alternative discourses focused on sovereignty and participation exist in the Philippines, however these are often marginalised from dominant policy and research programs. The paper discusses how weak feedback processes provide possible intervention points in policy or farmer-led activities to explore alternative pathways to food and nutrition security. The paper concludes with highlighting how human ecology offers useful framework for advancing food systems analysis into social, political, and policy dimensions of food activities. Such analysis can help develop new research and policies that require managing the competing discourses of how to achieve sustainable food and nutrition security.

There has been a shift in modern tertiary education theory that has moved away from a traditional, didactic model of education, towards a more student-led, constructivist approach. Nowhere is this more the case than in science and mathematical education, where the concept of research-led education is gaining more and more traction. The focus of this approach is on training students to join a community of scholars, rather than on encouraging the accrual of factual knowledge. What has scope to be addressed further in this area is what students might gain from research experience and the impact this kind of education has on career intentions. The current study, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative survey data, explores this experience. We aim to answer questions surrounding skill gains, student perceptions and the impact on career choices. Findings indicate that students value research experience and gain much from it. Further, we find evidence that engaging in, and benefiting from, research experience is related to career intentions. These results have implications for the ways we scaffold research experience for students, as well as reinforcing the value of this approach to education.

ThisarticledrawsonLaViaCampesina’sde!nitionoffoodsovereigntyandits potential for reconceptualising food as a basic human right within thedominant Australian food discourse. We argue that the educative valuethat emerges from urban food production in Australia stems from theaction of growing food and its capacity to transform individuals’ social andenvironmental concerns over food systems. Community participation inurbanfood productioncan promotealearningprocess thatgeneratespolit-ical understanding and concerns over food systems. We use the educationtheories of transformative learning and critical consciousness to discusshow Australian urban food production systems can create this social andenvironmentalsupportforalternativefoodsystems.Byhavingcontroloverfood production practices and building collective understandings of howfood choices impact global food systems, elements of food sovereignty candevelop in an Australian urban context.The production of food for human consumption involves complex interactions betweensocial and environmental aspects of the systems (Ericksen, 2008). These interactionsinclude food production, processing and packaging, distributing and retailing, and con-sumption (Ingram et al., 2010). Signi!cant social, economic, ethical and environmentalissues arise from all of these activities. For example, over one billion people lack ade-quate access to food (Altieri, Nicholls, & Funes, 2012;FoodandAgricultureOrganiza-tion [FAO], 2012), production methods have resulted in major loss of biodiversity andseverely degraded environments (Altieri, 2009, 2012;Deutsh,Dyball,SGliessman,2007),andescalatingfoodpriceshaveledtosocialunrestinmanycountries(FAO, 2012;Lang,2010).One response to these challenges is the discourse of food sovereignty, which arguesthat food is an indelible human right, thus presenting a radically different way of con-ceptualising food systems. At its core, food sovereignty asserts the rights of peoplesand nations to control their own food systems, including markets, production models,food cultures and environments (Wittman, Desmarais, & Wiebe, 2010). From its orig-inal focus on peasant farmers in developing nations (Martinez-Torres & Rosset, 2010;Address for correspondence:FedericoDavila,FennerSchoolofEnvironmentandSoci-ety, Australian National University, Building 141, Linnaeus Way, Canberra ACT 2601,Australia. Email: federico.davila@anu.edu.au

Higher education institutions are considered by many to be pivotal in shaping the next generation of thinkers and practitioners required to further work towards addressing the sustainability challenges faced by contemporary societies. The extent to which higher education has embraced this responsibility is debateable. Notwithstanding, this article reports upon our experience as three students employed as tutors in teaching sustainability to our undergraduate counterparts. Drawing upon our collective experience as both students and tutors within The Fenner School of Environment and Society of the Australian National University, we explore what makes student-facilitators part of an effective approach for sustainability education. Through this process, we describe some key practices that student-facilitators apply and which contribute to students’ understandings of sustainability. These key practices are: conceptualising what a tutorial should be; taking the position as a facilitator of discussion; using game-based activities; and the role that student-facilitators play in a community of social learning at the Fenner School. We conclude that the incorporation of student-facilitators in the teaching and learning of sustainability play a unique and significant role that should be valued, fostered and supported in higher education.