IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/agrhuv/v40y2023i3d10.1007_s10460-023-10418-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring the end of hunger: Knowledge politics in the selection of SDG food security indicators

Author

Listed:
  • Thor Olav Iversen

    (University of Bergen)

  • Ola Westengen

    (Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU))

  • Morten Jerven

    (Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU))

Abstract

Ending world hunger remains one of the central global challenges, but the question of how to measure and define the problem is politically charged. This article chronicles and analyses the indicator selection process for SDG 2.1, focusing in particular on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) indicator. Despite alleged efforts to separate political and technical aspects in the indicator selection process we find that they were entangled from the start. While there was significant contestation around which indicators should be selected, the process was characterized by pathway lock-in: The complexity of food security quantification and the resource constraints in the process favored already established data infrastructures and milieus of expertise, locking in the position of FAO and its established food security indicators. The SDG 2.1 indicators frame food insecurity in terms of caloric supply and demand and individual experience, arguably excluding dimensions of democratic agency, sustainability and other dimensions and drivers of food insecurity. The lock-in has thus embedded a narrow concept of food security in the major global indicator framework for food security monitoring. This is likely to have significant effects on how food insecurity is addressed nationally and internationally. Addressing the knowledge politics of food security indicators is important to broaden and open the agenda for sustainable transformation of food systems. Statistics and indicators are important tools in this agenda, but a diversity of approaches and data infrastructures from the local to the international level are needed to understand the multiple dimensions and drivers of food insecurity.

Suggested Citation

  • Thor Olav Iversen & Ola Westengen & Morten Jerven, 2023. "Measuring the end of hunger: Knowledge politics in the selection of SDG food security indicators," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(3), pages 1273-1286, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:40:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s10460-023-10418-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s10460-023-10418-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10460-023-10418-6
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10460-023-10418-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Leach, Melissa & Nisbett, Nicholas & Cabral, Lídia & Harris, Jody & Hossain, Naomi & Thompson, John, 2020. "Food politics and development," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    2. Joanna B. Upton & Jennifer Denno Cissé & Christopher B. Barrett, 2016. "Food security as resilience: reconciling definition and measurement," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 47(S1), pages 135-147, November.
    3. Sakiko Fukuda-Parr & Amy Orr, 2014. "The MDG Hunger Target and the Competing Frameworks of Food Security," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(2-3), pages 147-160, July.
    4. Mark Elder & Simon Høiberg Olsen, 2019. "The Design of Environmental Priorities in the SDGs," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 10(S1), pages 70-82, January.
    5. Marcus Taylor & Remy Bargout & Suhas Bhasme, 2021. "Situating Political Agronomy: The Knowledge Politics of Hybrid Rice in India and Uganda," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 52(1), pages 168-191, January.
    6. Sakiko Fukuda‐Parr & Desmond McNeill, 2019. "Knowledge and Politics in Setting and Measuring the SDGs: Introduction to Special Issue," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 10(S1), pages 5-15, January.
    7. Sally Engle Merry, 2019. "The Sustainable Development Goals Confront the Infrastructure of Measurement," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 10(S1), pages 146-148, January.
    8. Desmond McNeill, 2019. "The Contested Discourse of Sustainable Agriculture," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 10(S1), pages 16-27, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thor Olav Iversen, 2023. "Boundary experts: Science and politics in measuring the Sustainable Development Goals," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 14(4), pages 600-610, September.
    2. Iversen, Thor Olav & Westengen, Ola T. & Jerven, Morten, 2023. "The history of hunger: Counting calories to make global food security legible," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 30(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Iversen, Thor Olav & Westengen, Ola T. & Jerven, Morten, 2023. "The history of hunger: Counting calories to make global food security legible," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 30(C).
    2. Thor Olav Iversen, 2023. "Boundary experts: Science and politics in measuring the Sustainable Development Goals," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 14(4), pages 600-610, September.
    3. Abdulkarim Hasan Rashed & Afzal Shah, 2021. "The role of private sector in the implementation of sustainable development goals," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 2931-2948, March.
    4. Lena Partzsch, 2023. "Missing the SDGs: Political accountability for insufficient environmental action," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 14(3), pages 438-450, June.
    5. Kok, Kristiaan P.W. & Klerkx, Laurens, 2023. "Addressing the politics of mission-oriented agricultural innovation systems," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 211(C).
    6. MacFeely Steve, 2020. "Measuring the Sustainable Development Goal Indicators: An Unprecedented Statistical Challenge," Journal of Official Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 36(2), pages 361-378, June.
    7. Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, 2022. "When indicators fail: SPAR, the invisible measure of pandemic preparedness [Governing the world at a distance: The practice of global benchmarking]," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 41(4), pages 528-540.
    8. Johannes M Waldmüller & Mandy Yap & Krushil Watene, 2022. "Remaking the Sustainable Development Goals: relational Indigenous epistemologies [Assessing national progress and priorities for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Experience from Australia]," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 41(4), pages 471-485.
    9. Paul Mansell & Simon P. Philbin & Efrosyni Konstantinou, 2020. "Redefining the Use of Sustainable Development Goals at the Organisation and Project Levels—A Survey of Engineers," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-39, August.
    10. Frank Biermann & Thomas Hickmann & Carole-Anne Sénit & Marianne Beisheim & Steven Bernstein & Pamela Chasek & Leonie Grob & Rakhyun E. Kim & Louis J. Kotzé & Måns Nilsson & Andrea Ordóñez Llanos & Chu, 2022. "Scientific evidence on the political impact of the Sustainable Development Goals," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 5(9), pages 795-800, September.
    11. Anthony Alexander & Helen Walker & Izabela Delabre, 2022. "A Decision Theory Perspective on Wicked Problems, SDGs and Stakeholders: The Case of Deforestation," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 180(4), pages 975-995, November.
    12. Siegel, Karen M. & Bastos Lima, Mairon G., 2020. "When international sustainability frameworks encounter domestic politics: The sustainable development goals and agri-food governance in South America," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    13. Tesfaye, Wondimagegn & Tirivayi, Nyasha, 2020. "Crop diversity, household welfare and consumption smoothing under risk: Evidence from rural Uganda," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    14. Pan, Wenjian & Du, Juan, 2021. "Towards sustainable urban transition: A critical review of strategies and policies of urban village renewal in Shenzhen, China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    15. Korir, Lilian & Rizov, Marian & Ruto, Eric, 2020. "Food security in Kenya: Insights from a household food demand model," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 99-108.
    16. Dang, Hai-Anh H. & Serajuddin, Umar, 2020. "Tracking the sustainable development goals: Emerging measurement challenges and further reflections," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).
    17. Hametner, Markus, 2022. "Economics without ecology: How the SDGs fail to align socioeconomic development with environmental sustainability," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 199(C).
    18. Diane Kapgen & Laurence Roudart, 2023. "A Multidisciplinary Approach to Assess Smallholder Farmers' Adoption of New Technologies in Development Interventions," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 35(4), pages 974-995, August.
    19. Sotiria Grek, 2022. "The education Sustainable Development Goal and the generative power of failing metrics [The Learning Metrics Task Force 2.0: Taking the Global Dialogues on Measuring Learning to the Country Level]," Policy and Society, Darryl S. Jarvis and M. Ramesh, vol. 41(4), pages 445-457.
    20. S. Vögele & K. Govorukha & P. Mayer & I. Rhoden & D. Rübbelke & W. Kuckshinrichs, 2023. "Effects of a coal phase-out in Europe on reaching the UN Sustainable Development Goals," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 879-916, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:40:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s10460-023-10418-6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.