A human rights-based, regime interaction approach to climate change and malnutrition: Reforming food systems for human and planetary health
| Author | Rosalind Turkie |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/09240519221133642 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
A human rights-based, regime
interaction approach to climate
change and malnutrition:
Reforming food systems for
human and planetary health
Rosalind Turkie
*
Faculty of Law, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands
Abstract
The modern, global food system is unsustainable for both human and planetary health. The wide-
spread consumption of highly processed foods and use of production systems that negatively affect
the environment have led to a rise in nutrition-related diseases and exacerbated the effects of cli-
mate change. A comprehensive reform of global food systems and diets is needed to effectively
respond to this problem, but the interference of food industry actors in health negotiations is
diluting health policies at both domestic and international levels. This article establishes the con-
crete value of international legal responses grounded in human rights for tackling the global
syndemic of climate change and malnutrition. The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
(FCTC) exemplifies how normative conflicts between the trade and health regimes can be over-
come. Forming an effective and egalitarian response to malnutrition and climate change will
require a rights-based, regime interaction approach that prioritizes human and planetary health
over private interests.
Keywords
human and planetary health, global syndemic, human rights, food systems, climate change,
nutrition-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs), WHO, FCTC
* Human rights lawyer,researcher at the Pharmaceutical Accountability Foundation (Netherlands). I am extremely grateful
to Meaghan Beyer and Dr Brigit Toebes for their comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article, which is also a
chapter of my Master thesis undertaken at the Universityof Groningen. Thanks also to David Patterson and the editors of
the Netherlands Quarterly for their valuable feedback. I can be contacted at: rosalind.turkie@gmail.com or 980 Route
des Etangs 31530 Ste Livrade FRANCE.
Corresponding author:
Rosalind Turkie, 980 Route des Étangs, 31530 Sainte-Livrade, France.
Email: rosalind.turkie@gmail.com
Article
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights
2022, Vol. 40(4) 399–421
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/09240519221133642
journals.sagepub.com/home/nqh
1. INTRODUCTION
The modern industrial food system is damaging both human and planetary life and health.
1
Our
model of food production and consumption has created diets that are increasingly reliant on
highly processed foods, contributing to one third of the global population being affected by under-
nutrition or obesity.
2
Moreover, food production is responsible for approximately 30 percent of
global greenhouse gas emissions.
3
Climate change and malnutrition combined create risk factors
for all chronic, or non-communicable, diseases (NCDs), including diabetes, cardiovascular disor-
ders, cancers, and respiratory diseases. In 2019, The Lancet Commission published ‘The Global
Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change’, which portrays these phenomena as
a‘syndemic’, meaning ‘a synergy of epidemics, because they co-occur in time and place, interact
with each other […] and share common underlying societal drivers’.
4
The Lancet Commission
urgently calls for policy and law to create more sustainable systems of living and eating in light
of the damaging effects of modern diets and food systems on human health and the environment.
5
The global syndemic is a human rights issue: it is incompatible with the rights to health, food,
and a healthy environment. States have legal obligations to protect and promote human rights,
and thus a duty to respond to this problem.
6
However, human rights-based approaches
(HRBAs) for responding to the syndemic have received minimal attention.
7
This article assesses
the value of human rights in responding to the global syndemic of climate change and malnutri-
tion, proposing that international human rights law can provide a normative framework for
reforming global food systems, but argues that this framework needs strengthening by interacting
with other regimes.
The globalised nature of the food system connects various regimes of international law: trade,
health, environment, and human rights. Involving different legal systems and global actors is
thus essential for forming a solution. International environmental law norms (most importantly,
the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change or UNFCCC), global health policies
adopted under the auspices of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and nutritional recommenda-
tions from the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) can all be used to guide States towards
effective policies for reforming food systems in compliance with their human rights obligations.
This article focuses particularly on the role of the WHO and global health law.
Sections 2 and 3 outline the problem and establish the importance of international legal
responses to the syndemic. The added value of human rights for reforming food systems in an
1. José Graziano da Silva, ‘How to Create Equitable Healthy Food Systems’(FAO 2022)
former-dg/da-silva/my-articles/detail/en/c/1203604/> accessed 11 July 2022.
2. These coexisting epidemics are known as the ‘double burden of malnutrition’in World Health Organisation (WHO), ‘The
double burden of malnutrition: policy brief’(2017) WHO/NMH/NHD/17.3.
3. Michael A Clark and others, ‘Global food system emissions could preclude achieving the 1.5- and 2-degree C climate
change targets’(2020) 370 Science 705, 1.
4. The Lancet Commission on Obesity, ‘The Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change: The Lancet
Commission report’(2019) 393 The Lancet 791, 791.
5. ibid.
6. The global syndemic regroups most of the threats to ‘human security’: food, health, and environmental security. Human
security is defined as ‘protecting fundamental freedoms’in Commission on Human Security, ‘Human Security Now’
(New York 2003) 4.
7. For the purposes of this article, a HRBA is understood as an approach grounded in international human rights law. It does
not delve into the elements of a HRBA as a conceptual framework, as in eg: Office of the High Commissioner for Human
Rights (OHCHR), ‘Summary Reflection on a Human Rights-Based Approach to Health’(2015).
400 Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 40(4)
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