Food system sustainability: Questions of environmental governance in the new world (dis)order

In a time of climate emergency, the question of environmental governance is not only critical, but also epistemic. How ‘environment’ is represented is as critical as how environmental crisis is managed. This essay addresses a debate of this kind by considering the complementary and contradictory relations between the concepts of ‘multi-functionality’ and ‘food sovereignty,’ as they define the global landscape. The juxtaposition of these concepts and their practical implications for political economy and ecology has its formative origins in a European-led debate over the role of agriculture, as a critical dimension of environmental governance. In this chapter I examine this debate as posing questions with broader, global significance.

► Multi-functionality and food sovereignty are complementary, in stabilizing bio-diverse farming to protect eco-systems, provide rural jobs and local markets.
► The EU uses ‘multifunctionality’ as a form of ‘environmental governance’ to legitimize an agro-export subsidy structure.
► ‘Food sovereignty’ poses an epistemic challenge to environmental governance and the artificial pricing of environmental processes.