Food, Global Health 2 min

Jean-François Soussana, member of the Scientific Group for the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit

Jean-François Soussana, INRAE's Vice President of international policy and IPCC expert, has been nominated by United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, among the 29 experts of the Scientific Group of the United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021.

Published on 02 July 2020

Transforming global food systems, both to fight the triple burden of malnutrition and to protect the environment and the climate

The 2021 UN Food Systems Summit will provide an essential contribution to the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The aim is to raise awareness and galvanize global actions and commitments to change our food systems, both to fight the triple burden of malnutrition (hunger, micronutrient deficiencies, excess weight and obesity) and to protect the environment and the climate.

To prepare this summit, the UN Secretary-General has formed a multi-stakeholder Advisory Committee comprising 26 members from many countries including France and international organisations, as well as an independent Scientific Group of 29 experts, world specialists in their field.

Jean-François Soussana will provide his expertise on the relations between agriculture, food, climate change and natural resources. He already contributes his expertise to these issues on a national (French High Council for the Climate ), European (European Commission’s Mission Board for Soil Health and Food) and international level (author of several IPCC reports, including the special report on land in 2019).

Co-benefits expected for health, biodiversity, climate, soils, water and fighting poverty

The global COVID-19 health crisis has raised awareness of the need for food systems to be more inclusive and resilient, in order to limit the risk of future pandemics. Climate change is creating more challenges for food production due to extreme weather conditions: droughts, floods and massive fires around the world. However, our food systems are part of the problem, with about 30% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced by our food systems and food waste and loss amounting to around 30%. Food systems account for up to 80% of global deforestation, for biodiversity loss and soil degradation and for water resource use. Transforming our food systems is one of the major solutions to attain Sustainable Development Goals, since it could bring co-benefits for health, biodiversity, climate, soils, water and fighting poverty.

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thematic Climate change and risks

Two publications present the results of FACCE-JPI

The Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (FACCE-JPI) has published its new brochure and a flyer on soil management in the context of climate change mitigation. The brochure presents the achievements and future actions of FACCE-JPI and includes several key interviews. The flyer highlights some of the research projects that are part of the 'FACCE-JPI Multi-Partner Call on Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research'. Both documents were presented at the International Conference on Agricultural GHG Emissions and Food Security organised by GRA and FACCE-JPI in Berlin (10-13 September 2018).

12 December 2019

thematic Climate change and risks

Jean-François Soussana, promoting INRAE science at the international scale

Even though INRA became INRAE on January 1, 2020, Jean-François Soussana is still in charge of international research policy, a role where he makes full use of his broad skill set. He is the perfect person for the job, given his research on the effects of climate change on grassland ecology, the carbon cycle, and the nitrogen cycle and his extensive expertise at the national level (French High Council for the Climate), the European level (soils committee), and the international level (IPCC, 4 per 1000 initiative).

20 December 2019

thematic Climate change and risks

Using environmental scenarios to determine the world’s future

AllEnvi, the French national alliance for environmental research, has produced a study on possible future environmental scenarios based on a survey of major international foresight studies. The study tackled two issues: What do the scenarios look like and how long are their timelines? While future possibilities go from one extreme to another – from “Chaos” in the trajectories to “Positive Synergies” or environmental degradation and improvement – soil and water appear to face the most danger. These scenarios revealed major deficiencies with regard to seas, oceans, coastlines and forests that need to be quickly addressed.

23 January 2020