Agricultural production in areas characterized by low productivity, steep slopes, and high fragmentation is usually associated with higher-than-average management costs and environmental impacts. Abandoning this suboptimal cropland to vegetation regrowth, while optimizing crop production in other locations, is an attractive strategy for supporting climate and biodiversity targets without compromising food security. However, it has not yet been explored within the specific context of European agriculture. Here, we identify the area extent of suboptimal cropland in Europe and assess if crop production losses from its revegetation can be compensated by implementing scenarios of cropland intensification or extensification elsewhere. We found 24.2 million hectares of suboptimal cropland, of which 66% is at degradation risk and about 50% is within biodiversity priority areas. Reducing agricultural intensity in 16.4-30.9 million hectares of the remaining cropland by introducing parcels of trees into the agricultural landscape (extensification), together with strategic crop-switching optimization, can entirely offset crop production losses from revegetation of suboptimal cropland. This scenario has the potential to mitigate up to 40% of European agricultural emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce cropland pressure on biodiversity by 20%. In contrast, cropland intensification achieves lower carbon-biodiversity benefits, with risks that crop losses are not fully compensated.

The food system plays a central role in global greenhouse gas emissions. Trade policies and procurement criteria aimed at different food system processes are important tools that could contribute to reducing such emissions. This paper uses an LCA based approach to map combined production-consumption emissions across food system stages and products linked both to consumption, production and export, thus broadening the scope and impact beyond traditional national production analyses. We find that around 70%–80% of the national (Norwegian), and regional (Nordics and EU27+ countries) level food system emissions are at the domestic level, and 20%–30% come from import products. The production stage and combined post-production stages are dominating emission stages. We then quantify the mitigation effect of single and combined trade policies and procurement criteria at the different geographic levels, emphasizing the benefits of regional collaboration. Finally, the LCA approach and criteria impacts are compared to alternative methodologies to assess uncertainties in the impact of various measures. Despite differences in absolute emissions, especially in the land-use-change and production stages, we find that: (1) regardless of methodology and baseline used, criteria aiming at consumption change and zero post-production emissions are most powerful, (2) combined criteria generally promote stronger mitigation effects than single criteria, and (3) procurement criteria and trade policies can make important contributions to both national and up-stream improvements in the food chain.

Background: Public food procurement has the potential to play a significant role in transforming the food system. Objective: This study aimed to investigate the nutritional quality and environmental impacts of food procurement in public upper secondary schools within a large county in Norway. Design: A cross-sectional study with food procurement data from 35 upper secondary school canteens, analysed using a food-and-nutrient calculation system at the University of Oslo, which also includes a life cycle assessment (LCA) food database. Results: Food procurement amongst school canteens did not align with guidelines for food and meals in upper secondary schools and recommendations for nutritional considerations in public food procurement. There was considerable variability between the schools’ food procurement regarding nutritional quality and environmental impacts. However, on average, high levels of saturated fat and added sugar, as well as inadequate levels of folate, vitamin D, iron and iodine, were observed. Red meat and dairy products exhibited the most significant environmental impacts between the food groups. Discussion: Few studies have utilised food procurement data to evaluate nutritional quality and environmental impacts of school meals. Using food procurement instead of actual consumption data introduces some uncertainties, including limited knowledge about the amount of food waste, quantities actually consumed and demographics of the canteen users. Identifying key nutrients of concern can be invaluable in guiding meal planning and food procurement, especially in a school setting. Our environmental analysis supported current literature by illustrating the high impact of animal-based foods relative to plant-based foods. Conclusions: The present study found both nutritional and environmental limitations in food procurement in public upper secondary schools in a large Norwegian county. Encouraging procurement of plant-based proteins and sustainably sourced fish whilst reducing purchases of full-fat dairy products would better align with the guidelines for food and meals in schools and reduce the environmental impact. Moreover, significant variability in procurement practices that do not comply with the guidelines suggests a need for clearer guidance and follow-up.

Background: Food production contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and pollution. Climate and environmental impacts from food production vary across geographical areas. To estimate these impacts of food and diets, country-specific data are needed. Objective: This project aimed to compile an environmental impact food database, including the impact categories (ICs) global warming potential, soil acidification, freshwater and saltwater eutrophication, water use and land use, representative of the Norwegian diet. Design: The compilation was based on literature searches for original life cycle assessment (LCA) studies on foods, including domestic and imported foods, which constitute the habitual diet in Norway. Food items of importance in the average Norwegian diet were identified based on the national dietary survey Norkost 3. The study’s generic system boundaries included impacts from farm to fork: production, processing, packaging, transportation, storage and food preparation at home. Conversion factors for edible portions were applied when relevant. When LCA data of a certain food were missing, data from foods with similar cultivation conditions and nutritional composition were used as proxies. Data from other LCA food databases were also used if original LCA studies were not identified, or the LCA studies found were evaluated as being of poor quality. Results: The compiled database is tailored specifically for and covers main animal- and plant-based foods in the Norwegian diet. Discussion: Limitations of the compilation project include the fact that most LCA studies identified in the present project covered ICs up to the farm gate and used varying methodology. Also, proxy values were used when data for specific food items were missing. These methodological issues introduce variability and complicate direct comparisons. The strength of the present study is the thorough work in compiling and filling data gaps for the IC values of foods in the Norwegian diet. Conclusions: The Norwegian LCA food database enables simultaneous estimation of food and nutrient intakes and estimation of climate and environmental impacts of Norwegian diets.

This scoping review examines environmental impacts related to food production and consumption in Nordic and Baltic countries. The overarching advice to all Nordic and Baltic countries, in line with the current body of scientific literature, is to shift to a more plant-based dietary pattern and avoid food waste. Taking into account current consumption patterns, there is a high potential and necessity to shift food consumption across the countries to minimise its environmental impact. More specifically, a substantial reduction in meat and dairy consumption and increased consumption of legumes/pulses, whole grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds are suggested as a priority intervention. Reducing the environmental impacts of seafoods is also key and suggestions include a shift to seafoods with lower environmental impacts such as seaweed and bivalves. As part of the suggested transition to a more plant-based diet, the scope for increasing the provision of plant-based foods through increasing the cultivation of legumes/pulses, vegetables, and grains and through feed-to-food shifts within the region should be explored.

For as long as sustainable food systems have been on the global agenda, the meaning of ‘sustainable’ has been hotly debated. Discussing the use and abuse of the term sustainability in the food-system context, we select a specific case to illustrate this discussion, examine various sustainability arguments and propose ways forward for reduced meat aligned with local values and global needs. A contextual, transparent and nuanced debate can avoid policies informed by vested interests and straw-man arguments, which can backfire and hurt many of the very interests that the sector and policies aim to protect. In the midst of debates about climate and environmental impacts of meat, this Perspective uses Norway as a case study to frame a more holistic and nuanced approach to sustainable food production.

The achievement of several sustainable development goals and the Paris Climate Agreement depends on rapid progress towards sustainable food and land systems in all countries. We have built a flexible, collaborative modeling framework to foster the development of national pathways by local research teams and their integration up to global scale. Local researchers independently customize national models to explore mid-century pathways of the food and land use system transformation in collaboration with stakeholders. An online platform connects the national models, iteratively balances global exports and imports, and aggregates results to the global level. Our results show that actions toward greater sustainability in countries could sum up to 1 Mha net forest gain per year, 950 Mha net gain in the land where natural processes predominate, and an increased CO 2 sink of 3.7 GtCO 2 e yr −1 over the period 2020–2050 compared to current trends, while average food consumption per capita remains above the adequate food requirements in all countries. We show examples of how the global linkage impacts national results and how different assumptions in national pathways impact global results. This modeling setup acknowledges the broad heterogeneity of socio-ecological contexts and the fact that people who live in these different contexts should be empowered to design the future they want. But it also demonstrates to local decision-makers the interconnectedness of our food and land use system and the urgent need for more collaboration to converge local and global priorities.

This paper explores how 21 Nordic online food retailers nudge their customers towards more climate-friendly food choices. We use a choice architecture taxonomy dividing the nudges into decision information, decision structure, and decision assistance. We find that most retailers use several types of climate nudges. Most of these are decision information type nudges, such as personalized carbon footprint apps and climate labels. Wide use of non-salient nudges, often presenting the climate impact after the customers have made their purchase, limits the potential impact of information on consumers' environmental footprints. Furthermore, the use of broad climate categories and aggregated CO2 measures reflect the challenges in calculating the footprints of individual products. The lack of industry-wide standards for emission data and climate labels makes the current situation challenging for customers wanting to compare emissions across stores. Our results also show that few stores have any form of decision structure or decision assistance nudges, even though these are often found to be the most effective types in the literature on nudges. We end with discussing promising digital climate nudging opportunities for retailers seeking to reduce the environmental footprint of their customers.

Purpose Introducing healthy and sustainable diets early in life can promote lifelong healthy dietary patterns with a low environmental impact. Therefore, we aimed to estimate the environmental and nutritional consequences of a dietary change for 2-year-old children in Norway towards healthier dietary patterns. Methods Environmental impacts of the current habitual diet among 2-year-olds ( n = 1413) were estimated for six impact categories and compared with scenario diets based on the Norwegian food-based dietary guidelines (FBDG) and the EAT- Lancet Commission reference diet. Last, we evaluated the nutritional adequacy of the diets against the Norwegian nutrition recommendations for children aged 2–5 years. The current diet was assessed by an FFQ. Results Environmental impacts of the current habitual diet were up to two times higher than those of the scenario diets. Compared with the current diet, impacts from the FBDG scenario diet were reduced by 35% for water use and 18% for terrestrial acidification, whereas impacts from the EAT- Lancet scenario diet were reduced by 51% for water use, 57% for terrestrial acidification, 36% for global warming potential and 27% for freshwater eutrophication. Milk and dairy products were the main contributors to environmental impacts in both the current diet and the FBDG scenario diet. The scenario diets were nutritionally adequate and improved the dietary quality among Norwegian 2-year-olds. Conclusion Compared to current diets among young children, more plant-based dietary patterns in line with national FBDG or the EAT- Lancet Commission reference diet can improve the nutritional adequacy of diets and simultaneously reduce environmental impacts.

For decades Norwegian climate policy has largely ignored the agricultural sector and focused on cost-effective emission reductions abroad. Yet in June 2020, Norway decided to ban the cultivation of peatlands to protect critical carbon sinks, and the issue became 'high politics'. We explain this radical policy change by combining an adapted version of the Multiple Streams framework with the Punctuated Equilibrium model of agenda-setting. We argue that the two models combined can provide a holistic explanatory framework, albeit with two revisions. Firstly, the window of opportunity or punctuation was in our case of a longer duration than both models anticipate. Secondly, we find that multiple complete couplings can take place within the opening of a policy (or more specifically, a decision) window. Both findings can be explained by party competition, thus underlining the need to revise agenda-setting models to better account for party politics.

There is an urgent need for countries to transition their national food and land-use systems toward food and nutritional security, climate stability, and environmental integrity. How can countries satisfy their demands while jointly delivering the required transformative change to achieve global sustainability targets? Here, we present a collaborative approach developed with the FABLE-Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land, and Energy-Consortium to reconcile both global and national elements for developing national food and land-use system pathways. This approach includes three key features: (1) global targets, (2) country-driven multi-objective pathways, and (3) multiple iterations of pathway refinement informed by both national and international impacts. This approach strengthens policy coherence and highlights where greater national and international ambition is needed to achieve global goals (e.g., the SDGs). We discuss how this could be used to support future climate and biodiversity negotiations and what further developments would be needed.

The Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) is one of the main wheat-production regions in India and the world. With climate change, wheat yields in this region will be affected through changes in temperature and precipitation and decreased water availability for irrigation, raising major concerns for national and international food security. Here we use a regional climate model and a crop model to better understand the direct (via changes in temperature and precipitation) and indirect (via a decrease in irrigation availability) impacts of climate change on wheat yields at four sites spread across different states of the IGP: Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The results show an increase in mean temperature and precipitation as well as maximum temperature during the growing season or Rabi season (November–April). The direct impact of climate change, via changes in temperature and precipitation, leads to wheat yield losses between −1% and −8% depending on the site examined. Then, the indirect impact of climate change is examined, considering the impact of climate change on water availability leading to a decrease in irrigation. In this case, the yield losses become significant and much higher, reaching −4% to −36% depending on the site examined and the irrigation regime chosen (6, 5, 3 or 1 irrigations). This work shows that the indirect impacts of climate change may be more detrimental than the direct climatic effects for the future wheat yields in the IGP. It also emphasizes the complexity of climatic risk and the necessity of integrating indirect impacts of climate change to fully assess how it affects agriculture and choose the adequate adaptation response.

Climate change and air pollution can interact to amplify risks to human health and crop production. This has significant implications for our ability to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (e.g. SDGs 2, 3, 13, 15) and for the design of effective mitigation and adaptation policies and risk management. To be able to achieve the SDG targets, closer integration of climate change and air pollution both in terms of impact assessment for human health and agricultural productivity and respective policy development is needed. Currently, studies estimating the impacts of climate and air pollutants on human health and crops mostly treat these stressors separately, and the methods used by the health and agricultural science communities differ. Better insights into the methods applied in the different communities can help to improve existing and develop new methods to advance our knowledge about the combined impacts of climate change and air pollution on human health and crops. This topical review provides an overview of current methodologies applied in the two fields of human health and agricultural crop impact studies, ranging from empirical regression-based and experimental methods to more complex process-based models. The latter are reasonably well developed for estimating impacts on agricultural crops, but not for health impacts. We review available literature addressing the combined effects of climate and air pollution on human health or agricultural productivity to provide insights regarding state-of-the-art knowledge and currently available methods in the two fields. Challenges to assess the combined effect of climate and air pollution on human health and crops, and opportunities for both fields to learn from each other, are discussed.

Climate change in the Nordic countries is projected to lead to both wetter and warmer seasons. This, in combination with associated vegetation changes and increased animal migration, increases the potential incidence of tick-borne diseases (TBD) where already occurring, and emergence in new places. At the same time, vegetation and animal management influence tick habitat and transmission risks. In this paper, we review the literature on Ixodes ricinus, the primary vector for TBD. Current and projected distribution changes and associated disease transmission risks are related to climate constraints and climate change, and this risk is discussed in the specific context of reindeer management. Our results indicate that climatic limitations for vectors and hosts, and environmental and societal/institutional conditions will have a significant role in determining the spreading of climate-sensitive infections (CSIs) under a changing climate. Management emerges as an important regulatory “tool” for tick and/or risk for disease transfer. In particular, shrub encroachment, and pasture and animal management, are important. The results underscore the need to take a seasonal view of TBD risks, such as (1) grazing and migratory (host) animal presence, (2) tick (vector) activity, (3) climate and vegetation, and (4) land and animal management, which all have seasonal cycles that may or may not coincide with different consequences of climate change on CSI migration. We conclude that risk management must be coordinated across the regions, and with other land-use management plans related to climate mitigation or food production to understand and address the changes in CSI risks.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by all United Nations members states in 2015. “Erase hunger” and “Establish good health and well-being” are part of these goals and have major implications for agriculture and raises the question of how agriculture will be impacted by climate change. This work focuses on the potential impacts of the changing climate for agriculture, using the example of wheat yield in the Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) in India. First, the potential future changes in temperature and precipitation are examined over the IGP in regional climate simulations. The results show an increase in mean temperature and precipitation as well as maximum temperature during the growing season or Rabi season (November-April). Then, the direct (via temperature and precipitation) and indirect (via limiting irrigation) impacts of climate change on wheat yield are derived with a crop model for four selected sites in different states of the IGP (Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar). The chosen sites are spread across the region to represent its major wheat growing areas. The direct impact of climate change leads to wheat yield losses between -1% and -8% depending on the site examined and the irrigation regime chosen (6, 5, 3 or 1 irrigations). In this experiment, the number of irrigations remain the same in present and future climate. Then, when including the indirect impact of climate change the losses become much higher, reaching -4% to -36% depending on the site examined and by how much the irrigation is limited. This work shows the sensitivity of wheat yield to direct and indirect impacts of climate change in the IGP. It also emphasizes the complexity of climatic risk and the necessity of integrating more indirect impacts of climate change to fully assess how it affects agriculture.