Meeting nature-positive goals for an organisation’s food system

Abstract

Organisations are increasingly committing to ‘nature-positive’ targets, in line with proposed international goals. However, there are few worked examples showing how to feasibly achieve these targets. Here, we set out a novel approach to achieving nature-positive targets with respect to the embodied biodiversity impacts of an organisation’s food consumption. We quantify these impacts using a comprehensive database of life-cycle environmental impacts from food and provide exploratory strategies to meet defined targets, structured according to the Mitigation and Conservation Hierarchy. Through considering the varying needs and values across the organisation’s internal community, we identify a range of feasible, targeted approaches towards mitigating impacts, which balance top-down and bottom-up actions to different degrees. However, we also find that delivering ambitious nature-positive targets within current constraints will be highly challenging, particularly when considering how to mitigate cumulative impacts. Our results evidence the need for transformative systemic change if nature-positive targets are to be achievable at the organisational scale.

Strategies for reducing meat consumption within college and university settings: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…2023). In particular, there is an interest in understanding how HEIs can contribute to this larger effort by reducing the amount of meat consumed within campus environments (Ruiz-Mallén Heras, 2020; Sherry and Tivona, 2022;Taylor et al, 2023). Despite the empirical progress that has been made over the last two decades, there has been little research to date reflecting on how useful these interventions have been in promoting voluntary changes in food choice within university settings.…”

The Nature Positive Journey for Business: A research agenda to enable private sector contributions to the global biodiversity framework.

“…A considerable shift away from business as usual is needed for the private sector to align with the principles in Box 1 and make a substantive contribution to delivering GBF goals (Panwar 2023). For example, case studies quantifying the biodiversity footprint of the University of Oxford, and outlining Nature Positive strategies for the food system of an individual Oxford college, both identified that rapid, ambitious, large-scale institutional change would be necessary to achieve Nature Positive aligned goals (Bull et al 2022b;Taylor et al 2022). For businesses, this poses the challenge of reducing impacts and increasing efficiencies without compromising business-critical activities, while also taking actions to deliver additional conservation gains and remove barriers to a nature positive future (Booth et al 2023a partners is needed to answer these questions and help to drive technological, economic and policy innovations for a nature positive future.…”