Food Security: A Conceptual Analysis of Linkages and Interests in UNCED Negotiations

Wolf, A.M. (1991). Food Security: A Conceptual Analysis of Linkages and Interests in UNCED Negotiations. IIASA Working Paper. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: WP-91-024

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Abstract

Environmental and developmental concerns on the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) agenda are closely interrelated, both from substantive and procedural vantages. Food security, one of the proposed global goals of UNCED, is a concrete example of these concerns. This study explores practical applications of disaggregating issue complexity and explores a more formal way to improve understanding of how parties to the negotiation move toward mutually acceptable outcomes. Beginning with a broad framework, conceptual space, we identify six dimensions within which parties define a challenge like food security, their interests, and their beliefs about what should be done. Countries draw implications about the various levels of linkages within a particular issue area. At the same time that countries are defining the salience of an issue for themselves, they are also formulating judgments about possible policy responses to address the problems. These judgments are grounded in traditions of ethics and political philosophy, but manifest themselves as preferences among policies. Over the course of a negotiation, changes occur in perceptions, knowledge, and the relative importance assigned to corresponding problem and response attributes. Decision analysis models are well-suited to structuring this type of movement, and thus may assist delegates, conference leaders, and mediators while negotiations are still in progress.

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