Global Food Ethics Policy Program, School of Advanced International Studies, 1776 Massachusetts Avenue, WashingtonDC, 20007, United States of America (USA).
Department of Health Behavior, Society and Policy, Rutgers School of Public Health, Piscataway, USA.
Bull World Health Organ. 2023 Feb 1;101(2):140-148. doi: 10.2471/BLT.22.288830. Epub 2022 Dec 8.
Rivers are critical, but often overlooked, parts of food systems. They have multiple functions that support the food security, nutrition, health and livelihoods of the communities surrounding them. However, given current unsustainable food system practices, damming and climate change, the majority of the world's largest rivers are increasingly susceptible to environmental degradation, with negative implications for the communities that rely on them. Here we describe the dynamism and multifaceted nature of rivers as food environments (i.e. the place within food systems where people obtain their food) and their role in securing food security including improved diets and overall health. We also provide a conceptual framework that explain rivers as food environments within the broader food system and describe approaches to characterizing these food environments to better inform our understanding of how they influence food security and nutrition outcomes. Applying this framework to the Mekong River in Cambodia, we describe rivers as multifaceted wild food environments embedded within ecosystems, sociocultural and political environments and sectors of influence. We also explain the ways in which individual factors might influence how communities interact with this food environment. Developing and articulating food-related, ecosystem-specific frameworks and their constructs can guide implementation of policies aimed to improve specific public health or environmental sustainability outcomes. Our conceptual framework incorporates the multiple dimensions of rivers, which will aid future work and public health policy framing to better describe, understand and intervene to ensure protection of rivers' biodiversity and ecosystems as well as food security, health and livelihoods.
河流是食物系统中至关重要但经常被忽视的组成部分。它们具有多种功能，支持着周边社区的粮食安全、营养、健康和生计。然而，由于当前不可持续的食物系统实践、水坝建设和气候变化，世界上大多数最大的河流越来越容易受到环境退化的影响，这对依赖它们的社区产生了负面影响。在这里，我们描述了河流作为食物环境（即人们获取食物的食物系统内的地点）的动态性和多面性，以及它们在确保粮食安全方面的作用，包括改善饮食和整体健康。我们还提供了一个概念框架，解释了河流作为食物系统内更广泛的食物环境的作用，并描述了描述这些食物环境的方法，以更好地了解它们如何影响粮食安全和营养结果。我们将该框架应用于柬埔寨的湄公河，描述了河流作为嵌入生态系统、社会文化和政治环境以及影响领域的多方面野生食物环境。我们还解释了个别因素可能影响社区与这种食物环境相互作用的方式。制定和阐明与食物相关的、特定于生态系统的框架及其结构可以指导旨在改善特定公共卫生或环境可持续性结果的政策的实施。我们的概念框架包含了河流的多个维度，这将有助于未来的工作和公共卫生政策框架的制定，以更好地描述、理解和干预，以确保保护河流的生物多样性和生态系统以及粮食安全、健康和生计。
