Changes in China's food security driven by nutrition security and resource constraints

Food security and the utilization of natural resources in a sustainable manner are vital to the expansion of China's agricultural system. The relationship between environmental pressure and dietary structure has influenced the quantity and spatial distribution of China's food supply and demand, but it has not been evaluated. Our research centered on the security of China's food nutrition-resources-food (NRF) system, considering the inherent relationship between food security, nutritional health, and resource security. The following are the study's findings: (1) The Chinese population is rapidly changing from a diet focused on grains to a more diverse diet. Between 1990 and 2019, the dietary quality and nutritional status of Chinese individuals have vastly improved. In terms of nutrient levels, discrepancies between urban and rural resident persist, with urban residents consuming a diet that is closer to the ideal structure. However, the structure of rural residents' food consumption is diversifying, and the gap between urban and rural residents is gradually narrowing. (2) From 2000 to 2019, the pressure, status, and response indices of China's NRF system all show an upward trend, and the security of the NRF system has steadily grown. The magnitude of change in the response index exceeded that of the state index, which exceeded that of the pressure index. This indicates that the increase in the pressure and state indices of the NRF system was primarily attributable to the effectiveness of policy efforts.

Trends and status in resources security, ecological stability, and sustainable development research: a systematic analysis

Resources are essential for human survival and development, and resource security occupies an important position in national security. With the increasing resource shortage problem, ecological stability is facing severe challenges. All countries are actively seeking new sustainable development ways to deal with various issues and shocks caused by the shortage of resources. This study aims to systematically and comprehensively evaluate the knowledge structure, research hotspots, and resource security evolution trends. Based on the number of 6391 articles retrieved from the Web of Science database from 1990 to 2021, this article carried out a visual analysis of global resource security research from the perspectives of scientific output characteristics, keywords, and highly cited literature scientific collaboration networks and hotspot emergence analysis. The research results show that after humans have experienced new public safety incidents, their understanding of resource security and sustainable development has risen to a new height. The number of relevant documents is increasing rapidly. At present, the research on resource security is still dominated by developed countries in Europe and America. This study finds that "food supply chain," "water availability," and "soil resources suitability" are the frontiers and hotspots in the field of resource security. Besides, "biodiversity," "mineral resource security," "medical and health resources" are important topics and directions of current research. This study provides a theoretical basis for scholars to explore the future research direction and practice of resource security, to achieve ecological stability and sustainable development.

The external dependence of ecological products: Spatial-temporal features and future predictions

The instability of international trade can threaten the resource security of resource-importing countries, while international trade helps address spatial mismatches between regional populations, economies, and resources. Ecological products are the basis for human survival and development, in which agri-livestock products are especially sensitive to trade fluctuation and closely related to human well-being. The external dependence is an important indicator to reveal the external supply risk of regional resources. Scientific understanding the external dependence of ecological products can reveal the potential risks of trade fluctuations to human well-being and ecological sustainability. In this study, the global status and trend of countries' external dependence of agri-livestock ecological products are investigated. The results showed that nearly 80% (141) of countries relied on imports to meet ecological product demands in 2018, in which Asian-African-Latin countries accounted for about 78%, which indicated that the instability of international trade would threaten the ecological resource security in 80% of the world's countries, especially for underdeveloped countries. Even worse, 68% of countries are increasing their external dependence of ecological products. Even if the intensity of ecological resource exploitation reaches the maximum sustainable utilization level, 60% (113) of countries are expected to need imports for meeting their ecological product demands in 2050. Moreover, even considering the agricultural technological upgrade and the consumption transformation, more than 50% (94) of countries are still net importers of ecological products. Therefore, trade liberalization is still one of the important means to reduce resource security risks caused by trade instability. More notably, half of the countries in the world may sacrifice ecological sustainability to meet basic human well-being in the future under deglobalization.

Towards understanding the integrative approach of the water, energy and food nexus

The water, energy and food nexus (WEF nexus) is currently quite popular in environmental management. The concept found a fertile ground in science and policymaking, but there is no consistent view on the meaning of integration within the nexus. Here, a wealth of publications is reviewed in an endeavour to: (1) reveal the lines of justification for the need of the WEF nexus debate and (2) identify the range of tools for analysing the interdependent resource issues of the nexus using an integrated framework of science and policy. There are three drivers behind the emergence of the nexus thinking. These are a) increasing resource interlinks due to growing scarcities, b) recent resource supply crises, and c) failures of sector-driven management strategies. Evaluation of the WEF nexus integrative debate can be carried out using four key criteria, namely ability to change current policy debates, issue and thinking novelty, practicability and measurability, and clearness and implementation roadmap. It is clear that, although the nexus has been quite successful in changing policy debates, issue prioritization is missing and seems to be left to specific case studies and policymakers' choices. There is a high need for 'incorporation' and 'cross-linking' of issues between the three resources. In this regard, nexus governance is the missing link in the nexus debate.