Energy and food

 Adapted from the executive summary to the IIED’s Virtuous Circles: Values, Systems and Sustainability (Nov 2011) 

Vicious cycle hypothesis
In recent years, simultaneous crises relating to food prices, energy costs, climate change, biodiversity loss, the financial system and water shortages have made lives and livelihoods more difficult in all countries. We need to understand the root causes of these problems and the links between them. If the provision of basic needs remains fossil-fuel intensive and continues to produce large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, the security of food, water and energy supplies will increasingly be in danger as crises relating to these basic needs become more widespread, severe and prolonged during the next few years.

Negative environmental, social and economic impacts are a direct result of the physical and organisational structure of modern industrial food, energy and water and sanitation systems.

These systems have a linear structure: it is assumed that at one end there is an unlimited supply of energy and raw materials (which there isn’t), while at the other the environment has an infinite capacity to absorb pollution and waste (which it can’t). The inevitable result is resource shortages on the one hand and waste problems to air, land and water on the other.

These impacts and risks can be reduced significantly if there is a shift from linear to circular systems which are



designed to work long term. Virtuous circles, in that improvement leads to further improvement. Here is the shift described diagrammatically and below that an example of a positive cycle around food which provides many benefits as well as being a shift away from fossil fuels – indeed it includes energy production within it. The circular economy does not seek to deal with energy and materials separately, just as one would expect when the emphasis is on whole systems design. Energy and materials can be intimately related on the biological/food and farming side as the example shows – much as in living systems of course.