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2020 Report of the FABLE Consortium

On 3rd December 2020, the Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land-Use, and Energy (FABLE) Consortium, a collaborative initiative operating as part of the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU), launched its 2020 report, Pathways to Sustainable Land-Use and Food Systems. This second global report of the FABLE Consortium presents pathways towards sustainable land-use and food systems for 20 countries. Its findings suggest that integrated strategies across food production, biodiversity, climate, and diets can meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The FABLE Consortium seeks to understand how a long-term pathway to transforming the food and land-use systems in every country can be designed in order to meet these targets. As governments worldwide set out to plan their development strategies in line with the Paris Agreement, this knowledge can help support this discussion as well as guide short-term measures working towards these targets.

The FABLE pathways presented in the report now present at least one Current Trends Pathway and one Sustainable Pathway to assess how far and how quickly improved policies can make land-use and food systems sustainable. They have also been expanded to cover freshwater, future climate-change impacts on crops, a richer discussion of biodiversity targets, and a more detailed trade analysis. They show how countries can meet mid-century objectives on food security, healthy diets, greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity, forest conservation, and freshwater use. 

These FABLE pathways can be a method for problem solving, working backwards from mid-century targets and shedding light on the major transformations that are needed to achieve them. They provide a framework for engaging stakeholders, can help identify mid-term technology benchmarks, and provide a long-term perspective to help countries avoid locking themselves into unsustainable food and land-use systems. They also provide a tool for countries to integrate biodiversity conservation and restoration as well as food systems into their climate strategies, particularly in the run-up to the climate and biodiversity COPs in 2021. 

In a short period of time, the global FABLE Consortium country teams has developed major analytical capacities on land-use and food systems, pioneered new tools, and strengthened the
analytical capacity in 20 countries. It plans to focus upcoming work on the following priorities:
1. As part of FOLU, work with interested governments to support integrated strategies, including climate and biodiversity strategies under the climate and biodiversity conventions, that address short-term pressures on land-use and food systems and are consistent with meeting long-term goals.
2. Advance a deeper understanding of how countries can design, implement, and monitor better policies to transform their land-use and food systems through the new Food, Environment, Land, and Development (FELD) Action Tracker
3. Improve modeling tools to develop pathways and model policy options for land-use and food systems.
4. Train the next generation of analysts and policymakers in developing long-term pathways towards sustainable land-use and food systems, so that FABLE tools can be applied by any research group or government that would like to do so.
5. Strengthen and expand the FABLE Consortium, including by welcoming new country teams.

Adapted from a press release prepared by SDSN.

 

About FABLE

Operating as part of the Food and Land Use Coalition, the Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land-Use, and Energy (FABLE) Consortium mobilizes top knowledge institutions from 20 countries to support the development of decision-support tools and long-term pathways towards sustainable food and land-use systems. The FABLE Secretariat, led by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), with support from EAT and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), coordinates the FABLE Consortium.

FABLE comprises 19 country teams, which develop data and modelling infrastructure to promote ambitious, integrated strategies towards sustainable land-use and food systems. Countries participating in the FABLE Consortium are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Ethiopia, Finland, Germany, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Russian Federation, Rwanda, South Africa, Sweden, United Kingdom and United States.

The Malaysian country team to the FABLE consortium comprised of researchers, Low Wai Sern, Andrew Fan Chiah Howe, Jeremy Lim Jiang Shen, Danesh Prakash Chacko, Chen Jit Ern and Goh Chun Sheng of the Jeffrey Sachs Center on Sustainable Development.

To view the full report and country chapters, kindly visit https://www.foodandlandusecoalition.org/fable/.