In May 2021, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs released a report on the global economic situation and prospects as of mid-2021. According to the report, the global economic outlook has improved in recent years, driven by a robust economic recovery supported by accelerated vaccination and fiscal and financial support measures in the two largest economies, China and the United States, but widening economic and vaccination gaps with developing countries are overshadowing the achievement of global economic growth rates in 2021. However, widening economic and vaccination disparities with developing countries and other areas are casting a shadow on achieving global growth rates in 2021.

This is the 300th article in this Pick Up series. In this article, we would like to introduce a paper that summarizes the concept of the Anthropocene, which has become a common topic of discussion in the food system. The concept was first introduced in 2000 by Paul Crutzen, a Nobel laureate in chemistry, who argued that human impact on the earth was sufficient to create a new geological era. Today, in the earth sciences, the Anthropocene is commonly associated with the "Great Acceleration" of the mid-20th century and 1950s, but in the arts and humanities, it seems to be interpreted in a broader sense.

The slogan for the celebration of International Biodiversity Day 2021 is "We're part of the solution #ForNature", and we would like to share our thoughts on biodiversity by summarizing the Pick Up articles on biodiversity that we have covered so far.

A paper published in One Earth in May 2021 asserts that under the worst-case climate change scenario, regions equivalent to one-third of the world's food production could fall outside the safe climatic space suitable for agriculture. The regions projected to be most vulnerable are those with inherently low resilience to climate change, such as South and Southeast Asia and the Sudan Sahel zone in Africa.

The Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition (a think tank of the Barilla Group, an Italian company famous for pasta) has devised a "double pyramid" of food systems. By placing the health and climate pyramids side-by-side, the model aims to show that healthier foods are similar to foods with a lower environmental impact, thereby reducing the impact of food choices on the environment and climate change.

According to the Global Methane Assessment: Benefits and Costs of Mitigating Methane Emissions, a report published by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in May 2021, methane emissions from human activities could be reduced by up to 45% over 10 years, thus limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5˚C in line with the goal of the Paris Climate Agreement.

In April, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) published the 2021 Global food policy report: Transforming food systems after COVID-19. In this report, food policy experts provide data-based evidence and policy recommendations for healthy, resilient, efficient, sustainable, and inclusive food system transformation by examining the impact of the pandemic and policy responses, particularly on the poor and vulnerable.

A paper published in Nature Sustainability in April 2021 discussed the importance of resource security in poverty eradication. According to this study, human demand for natural resources increasingly outstrips the speed of the Earth's biological recovery. As a result, the capacity of ecosystems to regenerate biomass has become a material constraint for human economies. The analysis showed that as of 2017, almost 72% of the world's population lived in countries where the supply of biological resources does not meet demand, and low-income countries were trapped in a situation called an ‘ecological poverty trap’.

The Nobel Prize Summit "Our Planet, Our Future" was held online on April 26-28, 2021 providing a venue where scientists discussed the importance of action and collaboration in addressing global challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss. A mini-special lecture presented at the recent JIRCAS Open House, which was held in conjunction with the Science and Technology Week, discussed the actions needed for planetary health based on the development of food systems and science and technology since the 20th century.