Keeping It Real - Exploring Personal Sustainability in the Context of Food Systems

About this Research Topic

Background

What use are well-geared regulations and innovative production and disposal methods when the attitudes of smaller-scale organizations and individual households are less well-known? The role of inner change of individual, intra-, and inter-personal aspects on the micro level and meso-level are often the unaddressed side of sustainability. Personal sustainability focuses on the human, personal and inner aspects of sustainable development where one’s ability to live a lifestyle that includes the awareness of interconnections and conduct of individual actions and how they contribute to sustainability at higher levels. However, the approaches and evidence towards understanding the personal aspects of sustainability are scarce. Through collecting different ‘personal’ approaches of various disciplines and research fields and bringing them together under the “personal sustainability”, we aim to explore the unaddressed yet an important and emerging field of sustainability research. A better understanding of personal sustainability would open possibilities for establishing new norms and culture of sustainability.



Personal sustainability is a relative concept, contingent on time and place, and thus what is ‘alternative’ or ‘sustainable’ can be considered and critiqued in multiple ways. Exactly what is personal sustainability in relation to food and food systems is contentious and disputed. Food is entangled in the nexus of food-energy-water and widely accepted as being central for sustainability, as food production, transportation and consumption all contribute significantly to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and other environmental problems including dominating land use. From an individual perspective, however, the personal sustainability may have many meanings: it may result from eating less meat, becoming vegetarian, or choosing to buy local or organic food. What ‘local’ means also varies between people in different contexts: understanding these various meanings can help understand the myriad characteristics and nuances associated with personal sustainability in the context of food systems.



There is a knowledge gap in understanding how personal sustainability can be improved with attention to planetary boundaries and the safe space for humans to live in. Although these are intrinsically human aspects they have been systematically ignored by academia. Food environments, consumer behavior and diets are critically and systemically linked to healthy, sustainable outcomes for people and planet. Key to these goals is better understanding of food and well-being undertaken by and of individuals and households in the Global North and South. The relationship between availability and accessibility of foods that are healthy, climate smart, diverse, preferred, and safe, and information and changes in how people eat, and waste food are less well known. It is in the practice of daily routines around food that shifts in diets and re-discovery, appreciation for old and new foods have been seen to emerge and supports personal sustainability and healthy diets.



To explore what personal sustainability means in the context of food system, and what factors lead to changes in food practice means to leave the common scientific paths and expand the horizon. We invite authors from sustainability studies, economics, cultural studies, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, sociology, psychiatry, area studies, and contributions from practitioners, to portray different approaches to personal sustainability and reflects on their potentials and pitfalls, paving the way to cultures and behaviors of sustainability.



This Research topic welcomes manuscripts that bring together interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary knowledge of personal sustainability around various contexts and particularly encourages studies on personal sustainability approaches including but not limited to the context of food systems. We welcome studies pertaining to but not limited to:

• the exploration of cases of study with different personal positions referred to waste management taking place in different places and the consequent scenarios, such as different scenarios relating to wastes (food wastes)

• Case studies in personal sustainability practices in action across the globe

• Description of social pressures that currently exist that combat better judgmental activities regarding sustainability practices

• Social, economic, financial impacts of complete individual sustainability practices

• Socio-cultural practices to local food ecosystems

• Case studies of household consumption and waste behavior, food sharing to minimize waste, farming communities, (in)formal local food markets in Global South and Global North

• Exploring the gap on how global sustainability agenda and policy are practiced in real life at small scale or individual level

• Case studies of the country-wide trends in household consumption, small-scale organization in (in)formal food system including vendors

• impact of urbanization on individual sustainability behaviors, life course transitions, lines of work, and hobbies

We aim for a worldwide coverage of these topics. We are especially interested in the following article types accepted by the journal: Original Research, Methods, Policy and Practice Review, Hypothesis and Theory, Data Report, Policy Brief, and Brief Research Report. We particularly welcome articles that present in-depth, comparative, and interdisciplinary takes on the issue, qualitative and quantitative alike.

Keywords: waste pickers, informal sector, small-scale, personal sustainability, low- and middle-income countries, sustainability practice, household waste

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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