Are the (legal) rights of people to food, health and wellbeing ensured throughout the food system?
The following section that describes the performance metric Environment for equitable food access that was embedded in Deliverable 6.3.
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Performance metric 2: Equity in enabling environment for food access
A second performance metrics is whether there is equity in the presence of an environment that enables access to food. Many food researchers have emphasised the need for a rights-based approach to ensure equity in food systems (Vivero-pol; vd Schutter; FAO Right to Food initiative etc). This includes not only the right to a decent diet, but also to a healthy environment and to decent work and livelihood. A rights-based approach is key to ensure that a basic level to ensure people’s wellbeing is met. Rights are ensured through law, meaning that citizens have the right to claim them when they are not met.
Well-documented inequities persist in terms of access to good food in the EU. This accounts for both undernutrition and for rising overweight and obesity. Both challenges are driven by socio-economic exclusion and other forms of inequity. In the EU, the groups that are most affected are the poor, ethnic minorities and the elderly. Geographically, challenges with food and nutrition security are predominant in the Eastern member states of the EU. Here problems are characterised by poor food environments and compromised access to fresh and nutritious foods, like fruit and vegetables (Cockx, Francken and Pieters, 2015; Rizov, Cupak and Pokrivcak, 2015; Alexandri, Alexandri, Păuna and Luca, 2016). Across Europe a pattern is visible where a growing number of people rely on food assistance (Hebinck et al 2018; Galli et al. 2018). Both phenomena show the need to assess food environments across the EU from the perspectives of equity and social justice.