The State of Local Food Systems and Integrated Planning and Policy Research: An Application of the Climate, Biodiversity, Health, and Justice Nexus

Food systems are difficult to model, given the challenge of defining socially desirable food system outcomes. Research that aims to advance agri-food systems must reveal opportunities for integrated food systems planning and assess its outcomes. The climate, biodiversity, health, and justice (CBHJ) nexus provides such a lens, and it is a potentially useful tool for understanding how (or whether) food systems planning and policy studies employ a systems-based, integrated perspective. Further, it may be used to identify how agri-food systems planning and policy engage with local objectives and co-benefits related to climate change adaptation and mitigation, biodiversity conservation, community health, and social justice. This research proposes an indicator framework to operationalize the CBHJ nexus, by undertaking a scoping review of over one hundred local agri-food planning and policy studies. Outcomes from this work reveal the nature and degree to which agri-food systems research adopts a systems lens that comprehensively models resilience, sustainability, and justice. Outcomes related to biodiversity, procedural justice, and mental wellbeing were not common in the dataset. Recommendations from the work include guidance on how the nexus can broaden the quantitative and qualitative data-driven measurements of food system outcomes. Future work is required to define appropriate CBHJ outcomes and their possible measurements across scales beyond just local levels.