Towards metrics of sustainable food systems: a review of the resilience and vulnerability literature

Food and nutrition security is a persisting globalissue and, in addition, food systems are now facing anew set of intersecting economic, social and environmentalchallenges. Recurrent socio-economic and biophysicalchanges put the sustainability of food systems at risk. Thereis an urgent need to develop knowledge-based tools toassess and monitor food sustainability and to identifypathways for food security and resource conservation. Thesystemic nature of these interactions calls for multidimensionalapproaches and integrated assessments fordecision-making to guide change. This paper reviewssocial–ecological system frameworks with the view toconceptualize the sustainability issues that affect the foodsystems. It is argued that the understanding of the foodsystems as social–ecological systems, and inputs from thetheories of vulnerability and resilience in particular, canprovide the concepts necessary to understand and modelthe complex system dynamics involved in the multipleinteractions between human and natural components