Opportunities to advance sustainable national-level food systems transformations: A case study comparing Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, and the United Arab Emirates

Margaret Hegwood^1*Waverly Eichhorst¹Hilary Brumberg¹Sebastián Dueñas-Ocampo²Brent Loken³Virginia Antonioli⁴Camila Cammaert⁵Jennifer Croes^6,7Carolina Escallon Wey⁵Jackson Kiplagat⁸Nancy Rapando⁸Peter Newton¹

• ¹Department of Environmental Studies, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, United States
• ²Department of Business Administration, Pontifical Javeriana University, Bogotá, Cundinamarca, Colombia
• ³World Wildlife Fund, Washington DC, Washington, United States
• ⁴World Resources Institute Brasil, São Paulo, Brazil
• ⁵WWF Colombia, Bogota, Colombia
• ⁶Emirates Nature WWF, Dubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
• ⁷Jennifer Croes Consulting, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
• ⁸World Wide Fund for Nature Kenya, Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya

Food systems transformations are needed to meet global climate, health, and biodiversity goals. Improving production practices, reducing food loss and waste, and shifting towards healthier diets are food system transformation strategies that could help achieve global sustainability priorities. Opportunities to advance these strategies will require considering national contexts because food systems vary substantially between countries. Little research has explored how transformations towards more sustainable food systems might manifest at the national level. Here, we use evidence from semi-structured qualitative interviews with 68 food systems experts to identify what opportunities exist at the national level for advancing food systems transformation strategies and how they are similar or different depending on the country context. We use a case study approach that compares four countries that represent a range of food systems: Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Our analysis revealed that broadly similar opportunities to address all three food system transformation strategies (improving production practices, reducing food loss and waste, shifting towards healthier diets) could be found across all four countries. However, national-level geographic and socio-economic conditions lead to differences in how similar opportunities may be most effectively implemented. Our results suggest that the national level may be an especially productive geopolitical domain for decision makers seeking to advance food system transformation efforts aligned with global targets.