Restoring natural systems will be ‘hardest’ part of circular economy shift

Update on our work on sustainable food systems by Francesco Rampa, Head of ECDPM’s Sustainable food systems team Dear Francesco, I hope that this message finds you and your family well and that you’re keeping safe. Although vaccines against COVID-19 are being developed at an impressive speed, the social and economic effects of the pandemic will linger much longer. If anything, 2020 and the exceptional situation we found ourselves in reminded us that, no matter how distant, communities around the world are connected. In 2021, we need to build back our food systems better, not only to avoid more health crises but also because of looming challenges such as climate change, malnutrition, poverty, inequality and biodiversity loss. Our team continues to work for a positive change towards sustainable food systems in Europe and Africa. Here is what has kept us busy over the last months. We wrote a guide on the concept and practice of a sustainable food systems approach to help practitioners and decision-makers to handle the complexity and move towards more coherent, effective and context-appropriate interventions for the necessary transformations. The guide came in handy also when discussing the design and adoption of a sustainable food system approach for Irish official development assistance. While Ireland’s development policy recognises the need for systemic responses to the challenges posed by unsustainable food systems, this has not been integrated into any of the country’s development strategy or operations yet. In an upcoming paper, we will put forward a three-year plan to integrate the sustainable food system approach into Irish strategy and operations – keep an eye out in the coming months! In the search for the sustainability of food systems, trade can either help or hinder the process. Together with the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food), we…

A research team, led by Northwestern Universitychemists, has made a breakthrough in surface science by introducing a new active mechanism of adsorption. Such adsorption-based phenomena, in which molecules are attracted onto a solid surface,are essential for today’s catalysts, energy storage and environmental remediation. The research demonstrates how artificial molecular machines — wholly synthetic molecular components that produce machine-like movements — grafted on surfaces can be used to recruit molecules actively onto these surfaces at very high concentrations, thereby storing significant amounts of energy.