The transformative potential of European Green Deal policies for global food systems

The need for societal transformations towards sustainable food systems has been widely acknowledged. However, as food systems entail complex interlinkages and relationships between a large number of actors at multiple levels, they are often described as challenging to govern and monitor. Due to large food imports, European Union countries play a key role in global food systems in terms of environmental impacts and natural resource use and the governance of these. In light of the calls to transform food systems towards sustainability and to improve the regulation of global food trade flows and the associated environmental impacts, the European Green Deal sets out the ambitious goal of leading the world in these endeavours. This study sets out to investigate the aspiration of the European Union to govern and lead societal transformations towards sustainable food systems at a global level, with a specific focus on exploring the transformative potential of, by the EU policy framework, proposed accountability regimes. A thematic content analysis of four European Green Deal documents was performed using an analytical framework inspired by the literature on sustainability transformations, accountability regimes, and governance mechanisms. The analysed documents address several of the challenges associated with governing telecoupled, global food systems, and the suggested governance measures present opportunities for developing innovative approaches to building global cooperation and enabling substantial change. Three conclusions were drawn from this analysis: (i) The two conflicting notions of emphasizing participatory processes to identify common ground versus imposing European food standards globally indicate implicit tensions and potential impacts on power relations. The suggested participatory processes need to make space for a multitude of possible transformation pathways, and to allow for the consideration of highly context-dependent food systems. (ii) The European Green Deal documents propose a novel approach to accountability, which attributes responsibility to intermediate actors that connect locations of production and consumption, so called ‘operators’ and global traders. However, proposed governance measures are also indirectly targeting the supply-side as the they are anticipated to influence producers to change towards more sustainable agricultural practices. Little attention is paid to how food retail and consumption patterns on the demand-side influence global trade flows and activities and impacts on the supply-side. (iii) Proposed governance measures rely on data collection and management controlled by European Union authorities. The selection of what is measured, where, when, and how, and who has the capacity to access and interpret the information has political implications in terms of what is being perceived as the problem, what it is possible to change, and who has the power to make decisions. While the high ambitions of the European Green Deal imply a range of challenges in relation to inclusive and just societal transformations towards sustainable food systems, they might inspire the methodological development and innovation that is needed to address the complexity of global food systems.