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This study applies a global food and land system modelling framework to quantify the impact of 23 food system measures on 15 outcome indicators related to public health, the environment, social inclusion and the economy—from today until 2050.

This study examines the outcomes of dietary shifts across intrinsic and instrumental conservation perspectives, finding that most conservation benefits already come from a partial shift to healthier, more plant-based diets, whereas greater benefits depend on more targeted conservation action.

The effectiveness of the different policies and policy bundles for food systems transformation to achieve SDGs in China vary widely. Using an integrated modelling framework covering 18 indicators, this study compares the trade-offs and outcomes of efforts focused on dietary transitions, climate change mitigation and ecological conservation, and faster socioeconomic development, ultimately revealing that dietary shifts offer the most benefits.

The transition to sustainable diets is challenging for countries that face malnutrition and limited resources. Now a study explores how various dietary transformations in China can improve public health, make food affordable and reduce environmental impacts, while evaluating the feasibility of the diet changes.

Transformation to healthier and more sustainable diets in China can generate measurable benefits for nutrition, the environment and food affordability. Integrating multidimensional sustainability goals into China’s dietary guidelines can help to align food policy with long-term societal and environmental improvements.

The future of food prices is uncertain yet key for food security and climate mitigation policies. This study estimates future food prices for 136 countries and 11 distinct food groups, showing that future food prices will become less sensitive to agricultural market dynamics and land-based mitigation policies, given the global transition towards more complex and industrial food systems.

Achieving the Paris Agreement’s climate goals depends on safeguarding and monitoring the permanence of forest carbon stocks, as delays in addressing their vulnerability to disturbances drastically increase mitigation costs and efforts.

Exposure to extreme temperatures is a risk to neonatal health and this could be exacerbated by climate change. Here, the authors quantify the relative contribution of climate change to the burden of temperature-related neonatal deaths in 29 low- and-middle-income countries from 2001-2019.

A significant challenge for policies aiming to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation is the avoidance of international carbon leakage. Research now shows, however, that even globally implemented forest conservation schemes could allow another type of carbon leakage through cropland expansion into non-forested areas.

Income reduction in high-income regions is insufficient for mitigating food systems greenhouse gas emissions. A deeper transformation is required that changes consumption patterns and prices emissions.

Replacing 20% of per-capita ruminant consumption with microbial protein can offset future increases in global pasture area, cut annual deforestation and related CO₂ emissions in half, and lower methane emissions.

Wood used in construction stores carbon and reduces the emissions from steel and cement production. Transformation to timber cities while protecting forest and biodiversity is possible without significant increase in competition for land.

The integrated and indivisible nature of the SDGs is facing implementation challenges due to the silo approaches. We present the three interconnected foci (SDG interactions, modeling, and tools) at the science-policy interface to address these challenges. Accounting for them will support accelerated SDG progress, operationalizing the integration and indivisibility principles.

To promote the recovery of the currently declining global trends in terrestrial biodiversity, increases in both the extent of land under conservation management and the sustainability of the global food system from farm to fork are required.

Competition between agriculture and land conservation may hinder climate and biodiversity targets. Here, the authors use global models integrating multiple spatial scales to assess how ambitious land conservation action and associated land-use dynamics could drive changes in landscape heterogeneity, pollination supply and soil loss.

As global population and food demand rises, it is increasingly unclear how reactive nitrogen pollution will be mitigated. Bodirsky et al.run a series of model simulations and show that even under ambitious mitigation, reactive nitrogen pollution is likely to exceed critical environmental thresholds in the year 2050.

In a world of deepening inequalities, climate polices might be feasible in high-income countries only. Here the authors find that overcoming global inequality through sustainable socio-economic development is critical for land-based mitigation in line with the Paris Agreement.

Current action is insufficient to meet both the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. Integrated model-based analysis shows that strong interventions across many dimensions, together with ambitious lifestyle change, are needed to enable real progress towards the UN Agenda 2030.

There lacks model comparison of global land use change projections. Here the authors explored how different long-term drivers determine land use and food availability projections and they showed that the key determinants population growth and improvements in agricultural efficiency.

Economy-wide GHG emissions reductions may negatively affect food security. Stringent mitigation policies, modelled as carbon prices, are shown to lead to an increase in production costs, food prices and the population’s risk of hunger.

The extent and cost of adapting agriculture to climate change depend on regional impacts and past adjustments, but uncertainties associated with a high-emissions scenario persist, according to simulations with a global land-use model based on multiple crop and climate projections.