Elsevier

Global Food Security

Volume 10, September 2016, Pages 71-79
Global Food Security

Translating the Sustainable Development Goals into action: A participatory backcasting approach for developing national agricultural transformation pathways

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2016.08.002Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Agriculture is key to the success of many of the new Sustainable Development Goals.

  • Countries need to transform their agricultural sectors to achieve these goals.

  • We present an approach for countries to develop agricultural transformation pathways.

  • Uruguay’s beef sector serves as a case study.

  • We demonstrate the importance of including local stakeholders and using local tools.

Abstract

A new set of objectives for sustainable development are now in place, known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and countries need to develop concrete policy roadmaps to achieve them. This is particularly challenging in the agricultural sector given the heterogeneity of local conditions, the diffuse nature of its environmental impacts, and the important interactions with various aspects of sustainable development – from education and poverty alleviation, to human health and the environment. And yet it is precisely because of these interactions that vibrant, resilient and sustainable national agricultural sectors are key to the SDGs’ success. This paper presents a practical backcasting approach and methodological toolkit – developed by the Agricultural Transformation Pathways (ATP) initiative under the auspices of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) – for countries to develop policy roadmaps towards 2030 using local tools and expertise that could help transform national agricultural sectors in a way that is consistent with the SDGs. This approach is illustrated using the Uruguayan beef sector as a case study, where productivity and environmental targets were developed in tandem with a wide range of stakeholders in order to maximize productivity, while minimizing a suite of environmental impacts – from carbon footprint and biodiversity, to nitrogen losses. This marks the beginning of a new approach to achieving the SDGs in the agricultural sector: participatory target setting and pathway development across a number of areas crucial to sustainable development – all under a harmonized framework provided by the ATP initiative. We hope the methodological approach and results of the Uruguay case study will become a touchstone for future work in this area.

Introduction

In September 2015, the United Nations signed onto a new development agenda, with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at its core. These goals (and the more specific 169 targets that constitute them) present a unified vision for making progress on key issues of social, economic and environmental concern by 2030. While they are global in scope, the actions these goals require call for concerted efforts at the country-level and below (SDSN, 2014). Consequently, each country needs to build a pathway towards the SDGs: a series of policy measures implemented over time with specific, achievable actions and outcomes at national and sub-national levels. And one sector of the economy that intersects with many issues of sustainable development is agriculture (Canavan et al. 2016).

A vibrant, resilient and sustainable agricultural sector will be crucial to achieving many of the proposed SDGs, as agriculture is a key factor in determining outcomes from poverty levels and food security, to health, gender equality, and a range of environmental issues. However, few countries have developed a clear understanding of how to make transformative changes in their often complex and diverse agricultural and food systems that would enable them to address these kinds of key cross-sectoral issues in a coordinated way.

This paper aims to present a practical approach for countries to build national roadmaps based on concrete courses of action that could transform their agricultural sector in line with the SDGs. This approach is illustrated using the Uruguayan beef sector as a case study. It not only shows that building transformation roadmaps is feasible, it also demonstrates the possibility for major economic, social and environmental co-benefits. We define “transformative” in this study to mean agricultural pathways that go beyond traditional agronomic priorities (e.g. increased yield, productivity etc.) and account for the broader array of SDGs relevant to agriculture.

Section snippets

Approach and methodology

The Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN; an initiative of the United Nations to promote practical problem solving for sustainable development across all scales) established an Agricultural Transformation Pathways Initiative in 2014. This initiative brings together countries with a diverse set of agricultural contexts under the umbrella of an international coordination team that provides support in two important methodological areas: (i) developing realistic national and sub-national

Developing a transformative pathway

Increasing beef productivity is a fundamental component of the Uruguay agricultural development roadmap, and therefore setting an ambitious productivity target for 2030 was the first step of the project (in kilograms of live weight (LW) per hectare). For this the Uruguay team used data from farms that are part of FUCREA (Federación Uruguaya de Grupos Crea, an organization that includes some of the most productive farmers in Uruguay) as a benchmark. The team set national targets for a number of

Identifying levers and roadblocks

Uruguay’s beef sector is supported by a robust inter-institutional framework that could be leveraged to implement the targets described in the previous section: a consolidated public R&D system and public-private organizations that promote technology adoption and beef consumption, domestic and internationally, providing guarantees of traceability, quality and safety. Farmers also have a long history of involvement in the sector’s development via direct participation in public-private

Conclusion

This case study marks the beginning of a new approach to achieving sustainable development goals in the agricultural sector: target setting and pathway development across a number of areas crucial to sustainable development – all under a harmonized framework provided by the Agricultural Transformation Pathways initiative. We show how combining an overarching methodological approach (backcasting) with local tools and expertise generates production and environmental targets that set the basis for

Dedication

We dedicate this paper and the entire Uruguay project to our co-author, colleague, and friend, Mario Mondelli, who tragically passed away as this paper was being written. We hope his spirit and belief in this project will drive it for years to come.

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