Concepts and methods for sustainability assessment: Insights from food security

According to the concept of sustainable development, available natural resources are limited and disproportionately exploited. The growing depletion of these resources is leading to intergenerational disparities, as it systematically deprives future generations of a standard of living even remotely comparable to the current one. Sustainability is an integrative and dynamic concept, composed of issues that have often been described as crossroads of interests and social initiatives, both economic and environmental. Being such a complex and multidimensional phenomenon, sustainability is thus very difficult to explore through traditional measurement approaches. The objective of this study is to define the research questions that subtend the concept of sustainability. In particular, the complexity of sustainability measurement in food security contexts and the approaches used for incorporating its economic, environmental and social facets will be analyzed.