Food Security in the Anthropocene

In the framework of the seminar “Sciences and Politics of the Planet“, co-organised by the “Master en Arts Politiques” and the “Energy, Environment and Sustainability” policy stream of the Sciences Po School of Public Affairs.
Guest speaker: Dr. Molly Anderson*, specialist in hunger, food systems, and multi-actor collaborations for sustainability.
Moderation by Dr. Sébastien Treyer, Executive Director of IDDRI, and a group of students.
Scientific advances, unveiling unknown environmental objects like deep sea ecosystems or environmental problems like ocean acidification, have always played a key role in the development of a policy agenda on the environment, the ecological transition and sustainable development.
Recent social mobilization movements on climate action or biodiversity (Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion) have grounded their political statement on science. Scientists had also warned of the link between biodiversity degradation through deforestation or industrial livestock systems and the increase in pandemics risks, without provoking mobilization.
This seminar aims at exploring the complex links between science in the making, society and social mobilization processes, and the institutions and processes of policymaking. It aims at exploring the links between how science progresses and how political debates and policymaking processes can change over time.To do so, it will rely on a series of conferences with prestigious speakers from the field of environmental sciences and of philosophy, with whom students will prepare a session and interact.
* Dr Molly Anderson is a specialist in hunger, food systems, and multi-actor collaborations for sustainability who has created and led inter-disciplinary academic programmes and participated in local and regional food system planning. She holds the William R. Kenan Jr. Chair in Food Studies at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, where she teaches on hunger and food security, fixing food systems, food policy, and sustainability.  
She is especially interested in food system resilience, human rights in the food system, the right to food in the US and other industrialized countries, and the transition to a post-petroleum food economy. She also works to bridge the interests and concerns of academicians, NGOs and community-based activists. She is involved in food system activities and planning at the local, state and regional scales, and participates in the national Inter-Institutional Network for Food, Agriculture & Sustainability and the regional Food Solutions New England network.
She has worked as a private consultant for domestic and international organizations, with Oxfam America, and at Tufts University, where she was the founding Director of the Agriculture, Food and Environment Graduate Program in the School of Nutrition Science & Policy and directed Tufts Institute of the Environment for 2 years. Molly earned an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Systems Ecology from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a B.S. and M.S. in natural resource management and a certificate in Latin American Studies from Colorado State University.
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