Food not only provides dietary energy; it is also the source of many different nutrients that play important roles in human growth and development, as well as disease prevention and longevity.The Sustainable Development Goal to End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture (SDG2) recognizes the inter linkages among supporting sustainable agriculture, empowering small farmers, promoting gender equality, ending rural poverty, ensuring healthy lifestyles, tackling climate change, and other issues addressed within the set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals in the Post-2015 Development Agenda. Some methodologies are being developed to help governments on planning and actions to achieve this objective. One of them is the Global Food Security Index (GFSI) developed by the Intelligence Unit from The Economist. The GFSI is an index which considers the core issues of affordability, availability, and quality across a set of 113 countries. The index is a dynamic quantitative and qualitative benchmarking model, constructed from 28 unique indicators, that measures these drivers of food security across both developing and developed countries. This index examines food security comprehensively across three internationally established dimensions, looking beyond hunger to the underlying factors affecting food insecurity. In 2017, index includes an adjustment factor on natural resources and resilience, assessesing a country’s exposure to the impacts of a changing climate; its susceptibility to natural resource risks; and how the country is adapting to these risks. Our main goal was to compare the methodology used in the development of the Global Food Security Index with the methodology of the Baromether of Sustainability. The Barometer of Sustainability is a methodological tool to measure development and wellbeing of a society. Human and ecosystem indicators are aggregated in thematic and dimensional indices. Subsequently performance scales are generated for each indicator, allowing the identification of vulnerabilities.Using the same indicators used in the GFSI, adjusted into a performance scale based on specialized scientific literature and data in Brazil we then compare our results with the GFSI. The differences found between the indices created by the two methodologies addressed in this study indicate that the inclusion of more in-depth knowledge of the local dynamics can generate significative differences between indexes. This might impact differently the formulation of public policies geared to the adaptation of each country to the changes in progress. In this sense, a more inclusive discussion with actors and stakeholders is necessary so that locally adapted performance scales be created for the formulation of indices more faithful to a possible adaptation of food systems in each country or region.
Redes Sociais