On July 9, 2020, a commentary article entitled "Reset Sustainable Development Goals for the Pandemic World" by Robin Naidoo and Brendan Fisher was published in the international journal Nature. Due to the impacts of COVID-19, two-thirds of the 169 targets under SDGs are unlikely to be met by 2030, more so, 10% of the SDG targets could worsen the impact of future pandemics.

In the fall 2020 issue of Finance & Development magazine of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Professor and 2001 Nobel laureate in economics, Joseph Stiglitz shared his views on COVID-19 pandemic in an article entitled “Conquering the Great Divide”.

On September 1, 2020, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), non-profit organizations EAT and Climate Focus published a report “Enhancing Nationally Determined Contributions for Food Systems” providing measures that each country should adopt so as not to miss opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In developed countries such as the G20, more ambitious targets should be set in the food consumption and disposal sector, whereas in developing countries with food security challenges, it is necessary to support the establishment of sustainable and robust food systems.

Researchers from the International Center for Forestry Research (CIFOR) researchers published a paper in Global Environmental Change entitled “Meeting the Food Security Challenge for 9 Billion People in 2050: What Impact on Forests?”. This study reviewed the global agricultural, forestry and land use models, and summarized the impact of increasing food demand with increasing population on forest area.

On August 27, 2020, researchers at the Centre for Competition Regulation and Economic Development of the University of Johannesburg published an article entitled “Africa has a growing food security problem: why it can’t be fixed without proper data” in the online forum, The Conversation. As the pandemic continues to spread, the article emphasized the need for access to accurate and timely information about market markets, food production and prices in establishing a resilient and integrated regional agricultural system over the medium to long term.

On 20 August 2020, the United Nations released the UN Climate Change Annual Report, summarizing the key achievements under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) intergovernmental process and the activities of the Secretariat. The report declares climate change as a planetary emergency, and that before it’s too late, there is an urgent need for global cooperation to make drastic changes in the way we produce, consume and procure energy in order to protect our ecosystems and strengthen resilience to climatic stresses.

The Earth Overshoot Day is defined as the day when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds the Earth's renewable supply capacity. This year, the Earth Overshoot Day for 2020 was moved to the 22nd of August, three weeks later than 2019, as a direct consequence of COVID-19 pandemic and reduction of humanity’s ecological footprint.

An international workshop entitled “Applicable Solutions Against Rice Blast in Asia” will be jointly organized by JIRCAS and the Food and Fertilizer Technology Center (FFTC) as online conference at 10:00-17:30 (Japan time) on September 18, 2020.

On August 14, 2020, Food Security published a paper "Enabling trade across borders and food security in Africa." While progress has been made worldwide in efforts to eliminate hunger over the past three decades, Africa still faces food security challenges. This paper attempts to analyze whether the elimination of trade barriers through reductions in documents, time and costs to export and import paperwork will improve food security in Africa.