WP4 - Next generation sustainability and resilience performance indicators

The overall aim of WP4 is to identify the next generation of indicators to monitor performance of the food system in delivering healthy diets from a system that is sustainable and resilient.

We start by investigating how food system sustainability can be described.

We do this from two perspectives, first by investigating food system actors’ perceptions on sustainability, and second by developing a theoretical model of a sustainable food system. Following this, we critically assess and discuss data for sustainability assessment and suggest indicators to measure sustainability both at the farm level and at the overarching level of the food system.

How are food system sustainability indicators used by actors in the food system? We investigate this in the later parts of this WP, where we also analyze how actors attribute responsibility when indicators signal that there are sustainability aspects that need to be handled.

This WP takes an interdisciplinary approach, and integrate knowledge from ecology and environmental assessment, animal health and welfare surveillance, economics, social considerations and resilience frameworks to derive relevant and useful indicators of sustainability and resilience performance.

Main research questions:

  • What are the next generation key indicators that successfully monitor sustainable performance across its three dimensions - environmental, economic and social, and resilience of the food system - at i) different system levels, ii) actors, iii) territorial levels, and iv) time?
  • How are these indicators correlated across the environmental, economic and social dimensions of sustainable development? What are the potential conflicts and synergies between factors measured by the indicators identified by society and different stakeholders in the supply chain?
  • How can indicators be populated with data and used for monitoring and evaluation? What data are available and reliable, and what kind of additional data collection and generation is needed?
  • How can supply chain actors, policy makers and society use indicators for decision making?
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