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Policy gaps and food systems optimization: a review of agriculture, environment, and health policies in South Africa

South Africa faces the triple burden of malnutrition, high poverty levels, unemployment, and inequality. “Wicked problems” such as these require innovative and transdisciplinary responses, multi-stakeholder coordination and collaboration, managing complex synergies and trade-offs, and achieving sust...

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Autores principales: Hlahla, Sithabile, Ngidi, Mjabuliseni, Duma, Sinegugu Evidence, Sobratee-Fajurally, Nafiisa, Modi, Albert Thembinkosi, Slotow, Rob, Mabhaudhi, Tafadzwanashe
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7615054/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37693217
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2023.867481
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author Hlahla, Sithabile
Ngidi, Mjabuliseni
Duma, Sinegugu Evidence
Sobratee-Fajurally, Nafiisa
Modi, Albert Thembinkosi
Slotow, Rob
Mabhaudhi, Tafadzwanashe
author_facet Hlahla, Sithabile
Ngidi, Mjabuliseni
Duma, Sinegugu Evidence
Sobratee-Fajurally, Nafiisa
Modi, Albert Thembinkosi
Slotow, Rob
Mabhaudhi, Tafadzwanashe
author_sort Hlahla, Sithabile
collection PubMed
description South Africa faces the triple burden of malnutrition, high poverty levels, unemployment, and inequality. “Wicked problems” such as these require innovative and transdisciplinary responses, multi-stakeholder coordination and collaboration, managing complex synergies and trade-offs, and achieving sustainable outcomes. Through qualitative content analysis of national and provincial sector-based policies, we explored the interlinkages between the agriculture, environment, and health sectors in South Africa in the context of sustainable food and nutrition security and the extent to which these interlinkages are integrated into policy and planning. A systemic analysis of the review outcomes was performed to identify its main learning outcome, the status quo in the policy process. The nature of feedback loops was identified, and a leverage point was suggested. The review highlighted that policymakers in the agriculture, environment and health sectors are aware of, and have understood, the relationships among the three sectors. They have also made attempts to address these interlinkages through collaboration and coordination. Unfortunately, this has been met with several challenges due to fragmented sector-specific mandates and targets and a lack of resources for integrated solutions. This creates implementation gaps and unintended duplication of activities, leading to poor service delivery. Transitioning to sustainable and healthy food systems will only be possible after these gaps have been closed and implementation optimization has been achieved. Focusing on meta-level problem-framing, functional collaboration through transdisciplinary approaches, and integrated targets are critical to successful policy implementation and progressive realization of national goals related to sustainable food and nutrition security, unemployment, poverty, and inequality.
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spelling pubmed-76150542023-09-08 Policy gaps and food systems optimization: a review of agriculture, environment, and health policies in South Africa Hlahla, Sithabile Ngidi, Mjabuliseni Duma, Sinegugu Evidence Sobratee-Fajurally, Nafiisa Modi, Albert Thembinkosi Slotow, Rob Mabhaudhi, Tafadzwanashe Front Sustain Food Syst Article South Africa faces the triple burden of malnutrition, high poverty levels, unemployment, and inequality. “Wicked problems” such as these require innovative and transdisciplinary responses, multi-stakeholder coordination and collaboration, managing complex synergies and trade-offs, and achieving sustainable outcomes. Through qualitative content analysis of national and provincial sector-based policies, we explored the interlinkages between the agriculture, environment, and health sectors in South Africa in the context of sustainable food and nutrition security and the extent to which these interlinkages are integrated into policy and planning. A systemic analysis of the review outcomes was performed to identify its main learning outcome, the status quo in the policy process. The nature of feedback loops was identified, and a leverage point was suggested. The review highlighted that policymakers in the agriculture, environment and health sectors are aware of, and have understood, the relationships among the three sectors. They have also made attempts to address these interlinkages through collaboration and coordination. Unfortunately, this has been met with several challenges due to fragmented sector-specific mandates and targets and a lack of resources for integrated solutions. This creates implementation gaps and unintended duplication of activities, leading to poor service delivery. Transitioning to sustainable and healthy food systems will only be possible after these gaps have been closed and implementation optimization has been achieved. Focusing on meta-level problem-framing, functional collaboration through transdisciplinary approaches, and integrated targets are critical to successful policy implementation and progressive realization of national goals related to sustainable food and nutrition security, unemployment, poverty, and inequality. 2023-08-17 /pmc/articles/PMC7615054/ /pubmed/37693217 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2023.867481 Text en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This work is licensed under a BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) International license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Article
Hlahla, Sithabile
Ngidi, Mjabuliseni
Duma, Sinegugu Evidence
Sobratee-Fajurally, Nafiisa
Modi, Albert Thembinkosi
Slotow, Rob
Mabhaudhi, Tafadzwanashe
Policy gaps and food systems optimization: a review of agriculture, environment, and health policies in South Africa
title Policy gaps and food systems optimization: a review of agriculture, environment, and health policies in South Africa
title_full Policy gaps and food systems optimization: a review of agriculture, environment, and health policies in South Africa
title_fullStr Policy gaps and food systems optimization: a review of agriculture, environment, and health policies in South Africa
title_full_unstemmed Policy gaps and food systems optimization: a review of agriculture, environment, and health policies in South Africa
title_short Policy gaps and food systems optimization: a review of agriculture, environment, and health policies in South Africa
title_sort policy gaps and food systems optimization: a review of agriculture, environment, and health policies in south africa
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7615054/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37693217
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2023.867481
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