Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: Co-Creating Sustainable Transformations of Food Supply Chains through Cooperative Business Models and Governance

该奖项为参与由55个国家通过贝尔蒙特论坛发起的全球变化研究项目的美国研究人员提供支持。贝尔蒙特论坛是一个研究资助组织的联盟，致力于支持跨学科方法来应对全球环境变化的挑战和机遇。它的目的是通过协调和调动国际资源，加速提供最迫切需要的国际研究，以消除可持续发展的关键障碍。每个伙伴国在一个联盟中为它们的研究人员提供资金，以减轻对跨越国际边界的资金的需求。这种方法有助于有效利用国家资源，支持对全球相关主题的优秀研究，最好通过多国方法解决，同时认识到全球挑战需要全球解决方案。该奖项为美国研究人员在至少三个参与国的合作伙伴组成的联盟中进行合作提供支持。这些团队将开发和采用新的跨学科方法，将可持续消费和生产作为一个社会技术系统来解决，以帮助为可持续、有弹性和公正的消费和生产系统的决策提供信息。该项目侧重于跨学科研究方法，让当地利益相关者参与研究如何在6个国家不同的社会文化和政治背景下创新、转变和加强食品供应链。传统的、全球化的粮食供应链容易受到许多因素的影响，如气候变化、流行病、政治动荡、粮食不安全、粮食价格高企、对工人的不公正以及依赖侵犯人权的贸易伙伴。通过减少运输、支付公平价格、在原产地区增加价值、采用工人安全标准以及加强从生产到消费的整个供应链的问责制，已经采取了各种努力，将食品供应链转变为可持续性。合作社商业模式，如工人或消费者合作社，以及合作社治理，如粮食政策委员会或社区支持农业，采用了许多这些可持续做法。然而，关于如何通过合作模式实现可持续食品供应链的实证比较研究却很少。该项目将探索整个供应链，案例研究将用于关注所解决的具体供应链问题、为转型开放的供应链阶段、食品范围以及支持性创业生态系统的治理要素。案例研究将采用一个理论框架，将可持续性转型、短供应链和替代食品网络联系起来，同时使用一种研究方法，将可持续性评估、愿景、战略构建、现实世界实验和评估方法结合起来，与供应链和治理参与者进行跨学科合作。该项目的结果将为研究人员和从业人员提供指导和灵感，帮助他们了解如何成功地将食品供应链转变为可持续性。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award provides support to U.S. researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a 55-country initiative on global change research through the Belmont Forum. The Belmont Forum is a consortium of research funding organizations focused on support for transdisciplinary approaches to global environmental change challenges and opportunities. It aims to accelerate delivery of the international research most urgently needed to remove critical barriers to sustainability by aligning and mobilizing international resources. Each partner country provides funding for their researchers within a consortium to alleviate the need for funds to cross international borders. This approach facilitates effective leveraging of national resources to support excellent research on topics of global relevance best tackled through a multinational approach, recognizing that global challenges need global solutions. This award provides support for the U.S. researchers to cooperate in consortia that consist of partners from at least three of the participating countries. The teams will develop and employ new transdisciplinary approaches to address sustainable consumption and production as a socio-technical system to help inform decision-making for sustainable, resilient, and just systems of consumption and production.The project focuses on transdisciplinary research approaches engaging local stakeholders on how to innovate, convert, and strengthen food supply chains in different socio-cultural-political contexts across 6 countries. Conventional, globalized food supply chains are vulnerable to many factors such as climate change, pandemics, political unrest, food insecurity, high food prices, injustices against workers, and dependence on trade partners violating human rights. Various efforts have been undertaken to transform food supply chains towards sustainability by reducing transport, paying fair prices, adding value in the region of origin, adopting worker safety standards, and increasing accountability along the supply chain from production to consumption. Cooperative business models, such as worker or consumer cooperatives, as well as cooperative governance such as food policy councils or community-supported agriculture adopt many of these sustainable practices. Yet, there is little empirical, comparative research on how to implement sustainable food supply chains through cooperative models. The project will explore entire supply chains, and the case studies will be used to focus on specific supply chain issues addressed, the phase of the supply chain open for the transformation, the range of food products, and the governance elements from the supporting entrepreneurial ecosystem. The case studies will employ a theoretical framework that links sustainability transformation, short supply chains, and alternative food networks, while using a research methodology that combines sustainability assessment, visioning, strategy building, real-world experimentation, and evaluation methods, in transdisciplinary collaboration with supply-chain and governance actors. Results from this project will provide guidance and inspiration to researchers and practitioners on how food supply chains can be successfully transformed towards sustainability.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.