Feeding More than 9 Billion by 2050: Challenges and Opportunities

Phosphorous vulnerability in the global food system; Dr Dana Cordell

On 22 April 2015, the Crawford School of Public Policy, FE2W Network and the OECD Co-operative Research Programme on Biological Resource Management for Sustainable Agricultural Systems launched a special issue of the Food Security journal “Feeding More than 9 Billion by 2050: Challenges and Opportunities”.

At the launch in Canberra and Copenhagen, contributors to the special issue presented their research on the challenges and opportunities of sustainable food supply. A selection of the presentations is provided in this playlist on the FE2W Network youtube channel. In the presentation featured in this post, Dr Dana Cordell of the University of Technology Sydney presents the first comprehensive set of phosphorus vulnerability and security indicators at global and national scales.

Since the food price spike of 2008 there has been increased interest in the challenges of feeding more than 9 billion people by 2050. The next 35 years represents a critical transition period in terms of food, energy, the environment and water. While markets provide some of the solutions, policies and governance arrangements are needed to ensure that markets operate efficiently, and effective governance arrangements are required to respond to the multi-dimensional nature of food security and to ensure that domestic and international institutions coordinate across policy domains.

At this special event, experts from Australia, Bangladesh, China, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand, UK, and US presented their perspectives. The special issue of Food Security can be accessed here.