Narrow views of systemic sustainability risks can result in ecological concerns being neglected, as well as giving rise to unequal distribution and exploitation of natural resources, creating injustice. Given recent advancements in integrating justice with the safe space environmentally, as defined by the planetary boundaries, now is a critical moment for business ethics researchers to deepen the conversation on managing systemic sustainability risks to create a safe and just operating space. We argue that the social-ecological systems approach, that views humans as embedded in and dependent on the natural environment, provides a foundation for business ethics scholars to deepen the conversation. We build on two key dimensions from the social-ecological systems approach, social-ecological connectivity and cross-scale dynamics to develop a framework that illustrates four ways for business ethics scholars to research systemic sustainability risks. We demonstrate the relevance of these dimensions for understanding systemic sustainability risks, discuss their ethical implications, and outline opportunities for future research.

Despite numerous pledges to the contrary, corporate activities are inflicting environmental harm and are pushing the Earth system toward and beyond planetary boundaries. Several sustainability accounting frameworks exist, designed to track corporate environmental impacts through corporate reporting, and there is currently a push toward standardization of these. However, most sustainability accounting frameworks still fail to fully capture the connections between corporate activities and impacts, as they depart from what is important for the companies (materiality assessments) and often rely on relative metrics. Here, we propose 15 essential environmental impact variables (EEIVs), applicable to all sectors, based on absolute metrics and what is essential for staying within the planetary boundaries. We argue that standardization must rather depart from these underlying premises. By designing EEIVs for seven primary industries with large environmental footprints and demonstrating the operationality via the aquaculture sector, we show how EEIVs efficiently identify the most important corporate impact information while increasing transparency between companies and stakeholders, thus enabling external assessment of corporate sustainability.

Today’s world is characterised by new levels of complexity; however our societies remain deeply embedded in and dependent on a functioning biosphere. A biosphere that is increasingly being degraded by human activities. In this complex and intertwined world, acute shocks as well as chronic pressures of unsustainable activities have therefore become a prevalent feature. Together these shocks and chronic pressures create a complex risk landscape that we need to navigate with inter- and transdisciplinary solutions. However, the study of risk and the risk assessment tools in use, are siloed into scholarly disciplines and mismatched with the complexity at hand. In this thesis I tackle this mismatch, by using a social-ecological systems perspective and a variety of methodological approaches. Together the four papers of the thesis develop the interdisciplinary concept of sustainability risk and start to operationalise it through the application to national food systems and corporate sustainability risk assessment. Paper I introduces the concept of sustainability risk that I use and develop through-out the thesis. The paper also summarises some of the key definitions of risk within different disciplines and proposes five key dimensions that need to be adapted and developed in order for the existing risk assessment methods to fully capture risks in a complex world. Papers II-IV all represent applications of the concept of sustainability risk to different contexts. Paper II addresses national food supply risks and highlights how diverse risks to national self-sufficiency can come from low self-sufficiency (resulting in risk from trade disruptions) and low production diversity (resulting in risk from production shocks). Paper III addresses the data limitations we encounter when attempting to assess corporate sustainability risk and aims to overcome some of these limitations by developing fifteen novel reporting variables. These variables also contribute to the ongoing efforts to standardise corporate sustainability reporting. Paper IV builds on Paper III and develops an initial framework for assessing the risks to long-term natural resource production emanating from the impacts of corporate activities, thus broadening the conceptualisation of what risk is and how we assess it in the corporate sphere. 

International trade plays a fundamental role in today's globalized food system, however, trade-related disruptions to national food supply have become increasingly prevalent. Although national food self-sufficiency and the resilience of domestic food production are both increasingly discussed, they are rarely investigated in tandem. This hinders our understanding of the diversity of risks to national food supply. In this article we investigate the contribution of production to these risks, through the compilation of a comprehensive national production dataset and a multi-indicator assessment of self-sufficiency and diversity. Our results show that most of the world (127 countries and territories, 87% of the global population) achieves high levels of potential self-sufficiency (≥6 nutrients fulfilled), however only 33% of the world population (41 countries) are fully self-sufficient. Of countries with high levels of self-sufficiency, fruit and vegetable production (a proxy for many micronutrients) is the most common “missing” sufficiency. 66 countries (6% of population) have a low degree of self-sufficiency, highlighting potential vulnerability to trade-related disruptions. The relationship between sufficiency and diversity is not homogeneous, highlighting that some production systems are reliant on very few products.

Academia has experienced acceleration and expansion in parallel with the Great Acceleration, which has shaped the Anthropocene. Among other pressures, the expectation to be internationally mobile conflicts with many values held by sustainability scholars and results in disillusionment. The changes in the academic system can be seen through the framework of the adaptive cycle, which can help us understand historical parallels and shape the system to better align with sustainability values in future. We hope this piece can contribute to the discussion of the next steps forward to reimagine academia.

Blue foods, sourced in aquatic environments, are important for the economies, livelihoods, nutritional security and cultures of people in many nations. They are often nutrient rich1, generate lower emissions and impacts on land and water than many terrestrial meats2, and contribute to the health3, wellbeing and livelihoods of many rural communities4. The Blue Food Assessment recently evaluated nutritional, environmental, economic and justice dimensions of blue foods globally. Here we integrate these findings and translate them into four policy objectives to help realize the contributions that blue foods can make to national food systems around the world: ensuring supplies of critical nutrients, providing healthy alternatives to terrestrial meat, reducing dietary environmental footprints and safeguarding blue food contributions to nutrition, just economies and livelihoods under a changing climate. To account for how context-specific environmental, socio-economic and cultural aspects affect this contribution, we assess the relevance of each policy objective for individual countries, and examine associated co-benefits and trade-offs at national and international scales. We find that in many African and South American nations, facilitating consumption of culturally relevant blue food, especially among nutritionally vulnerable population segments, could address vitamin B₁₂ and omega-3 deficiencies. Meanwhile, in many global North nations, cardiovascular disease rates and large greenhouse gas footprints from ruminant meat intake could be lowered through moderate consumption of seafood with low environmental impact. The analytical framework we provide also identifies countries with high future risk, for whom climate adaptation of blue food systems will be particularly important. Overall the framework helps decision makers to assess the blue food policy objectives most relevant to their geographies, and to compare and contrast the benefits and trade-offs associated with pursuing these objectives.

Despite the growing knowledge that food system solutions should account for interactions and drivers across scales, broader societal debate on how to solve food system challenges is often focused on two dichotomous perspectives and associated solutions: either more localized food systems or greater global coordination of food systems. The debate has found problematic expressions in contemporary challenges, prompting us to revisit the role that resilience thinking can play when faced with complex crises that increase uncertainty. Here we identify four ‘aching points’ facing food systems that are central points of tension in the local–global debate. We apply the seven principles of resilience to these aching points to reframe the solution space to one that embeds resilience into food systems’ management and governance at all scales, supporting transformative change towards sustainable food systems.

Human activities have progressively eroded the biosphere basis for our societies and introduced various risks. To navigate these risks, or potential undesirable outcomes of the future, we need tools and an understanding of how to assess risk in a complex world. Risk assessments are a powerful tool to address sustain ability challenges. However, two issues currently hamper their ability to deal with sustainability risks: the limited sustainability science engagement with the multifaceted nature of risk and the lack of integration of social-ecological, complex, and resilience thinking into risk assessment. In this Perspective, we review and synthesize the wide range of risk definitions and uses and juxtapose them with knowledge on complex adaptive social-ecological systems. Through this synthesis, we highlight the strengths of each risk approach and outline five challenges that, if overcome, could turn risk assessments into a much-needed multifaceted toolbox for dealing with the certain uncertainty of a complex future.

Humanity has never benefited more from the ocean as a source of food, livelihoods, and well-being, yet on a global scale this has been accompanied by trajectories of degradation and persistent inequity. Awareness of this has spurred policymakers to develop an expanding network of ocean governance instruments, catalyzed civil society pressure on the public and private sector, and motivated engagement by the general public as consumers and constituents. Among local communities, diverse examples of stewardship have rested on the foundation of care, knowledge and agency. But does an analog for stewardship exist in the context of globally active multinational corporations? Here, we consider the seafood industry and its efforts to navigate this new reality through private governance. We examine paradigmatic events in the history of the sustainable seafood movement, from seafood boycotts in the 1970s through to the emergence of certification measures, benchmarks, and diverse voluntary environmental programs. We note four dimensions of stewardship in which efforts by actors within the seafood industry have aligned with theoretical concepts of stewardship, which we describe as (1) moving beyond compliance, (2) taking a systems perspective, (3) living with uncertainty, and (4) understanding humans as embedded elements of the biosphere. In conclusion, we identify emerging stewardship challenges for the seafood industry and suggest the urgent need to embrace a broader notion of ocean stewardship that extends beyond seafood.

Risks are all around us, events or situations that could result in undesirable outcomes. Risk assessments are a way to understand and navigate the shocks and stressors we face and to avoid the undesirable outcomes that may come from them. We talk about risks in our everyday lives, and it is a concept that exists in many different academic disciplines. However due to its use in many academic disciplines, the concept has diverse meanings and no single way to identify and assess risks. This presents a problem for interdisciplinary sustainability science scholars who aim to see across disciplinary divides and integrate the understanding of each for a better view of sustainability problems and solutions. Resilience thinking on the other hand is well integrated with the sustainability science domain and addresses how to deal with shocks and stressors in the face of uncertainty. Although more and more research on risk is appearing in the field of sustainability science, there is a lack of integration between these concepts. In this licentiate theses I aim to bridge these gaps and to investigate the diversity of risk concepts and how they relate to social-ecological resilience. I address these gaps from a conceptual point of view, through literature review and synthesis (paper I) and by utilising both concepts to identify risks in the global food production system (paper II).