Increasing the Resilience of the Food Systems
In Islamic States in Face of Future Food Crises
12
the benefits and ensuring health and nutrition taking into consideration vulnerable gr oups.
Environmental sustainability entails having a positive or at least neutral impact of natural
environment including carbon footprint and food waste. 26
Traditional approaches to food security focused on increasing food production which , in
addition to potentially exacerbating negative impacts on the environment, would not single-
handedly achieve food security. In aggregate terms, the world currently has an adequate food
supply for its inhabitants; however, food crises andmalnutrition persist. With the sustainability
of food systems taking center stage, approaches to tackling food security expanded beyond the
focus on availability, whichmay achieve economic sustainability, to improving access to food to
ensure social sustainability as well as enhancing utilization to ensure both social and
environmental sustainability of food systems. In essence, both food production and
consumption need to be adequate and efficient for the development of sustainable food
systems.27
The origin of the concept of food security and can be traced back to themid-1970s,initially dueto
food crises caused by supply-side problems and price instability. The early definitions of food
security reflectedthe issues faced at that time, with the 1974World Food Summit (WFS) defining
it as the “availability at all times of adequate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a
steady expansion of food consumption and tooffset fluctuations in production and prices.” By the
early 1980s, the issueof poverty and access to food startedtobe incorporatedinto thedefinition of
food security by the FAO, which added the following in 1983: “ensuring that all people at all times
have both physical and economic access to the basic food that they need.” In 1986,theWorld Bank
expounded on the concept further in terms of the outcome of food security by adding“Enough food
for an active, healthy life.” Currently,themost widely used definition,developed during theWorld
Food Summit (WFS) in 1996, incorporates these conceptual developments and defines food
security as “a situation that existswhen all people, atall times,havephysical,social28 andeconomic
access tosufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for
an active and healthy life.”29
There are several systems, used by various agencies (including FAO, WFP, and Oxfam), for
classifying food security situations and crises, including those using “relative terms,” “guiding
definitions,” “specific aspect,” or a “referenced threshold.” The “relative terms” classifications
largely use variations of the terms “food insecure,” “vulnerable,” and other, similar terms to
describe food security situations. These classifications, as in many instances, are not
complementedwith standardized reference points, which can lead tobiased interpretations and
thus a lack of consensus. However, they have proven effective in signaling degrees of gravity of
food insecurity situations and in highlighting areas to be prioritized within a specific country.
The “guiding definitions” classifications associate theterms usedfor classifying food situations and
crisis with uniform definitions. The terms used in these classifications generally signal the type of
action needed while the definitions serve as a guide for decision making. However, in many
26 Ibid.
27 Capone, R., et al. (n.d.). Food System Sustainability and Food Security: Connecting the Dots. Journal of Food Security, Vol.
2(1), pp 13-22.
28 The original definition in 1996 did not contain theword social, it was added in 2001 in the context of the State of Food
Insecurity in theWorld Report.
29 FAO. (2003). Trade Reforms and Food Security:Conceptualizing the Linkages. Retrieved
y4671e.pdf