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Abstract The production and consumption of food is one of the main drivers of environmental change globally. Meanwhile, many populations remain malnourished due to insufficient or unhealthy diets. Increasingly, dietary shifts are proposed as a means to address both environmental and health concerns. We have a limited understanding of how dietary shifts could alter where food is produced and consumed and how these changes would affect the distribution of environmental pressures both globally and across different groups of people. Here we combine new food flow data linking producing to consuming country with environmental pressures to estimate how a global shift to each of four diets (Indian, EAT-Lancet, Mediterranean, and mean Food Based Dietary Guidelines (FBDGs)) could affect environmental pressures at the global, country income group, and country level. Globally, cumulative pressures decrease under the Indian, EAT-Lancet, and Mediterranean scenarios and increase under FBDGs. On average, low income countries increase their cumulative consumption and production pressures while high income countries decrease their consumption pressures, and typically decrease their production pressures. Increases in low income countries are likely due to the nutritional inadequacy of current diets and the corresponding increases in consumption quantities with a shift to our diet scenarios. Despite these increases, we believe that three out four of our simulated dietary shifts can be seen as a net benefit by decreasing global pressures while low income countries increase pressures to adequately feed their populations. Additionally, considering principles of fairness applied, some nations are more responsible for causing historical environmental pressures and should shoulder more of the change. To facilitate more equitable shifts in global diets, resources, capacity, and knowledge sharing of sustainable agricultural practices are critical to minimize the increases in pressures that low income countries would incur to adequately feed their populations. 

Abstract Injustices are prevalent in food systems, where the accumulation of vast wealth is possible for a few, yet one in ten people remain hungry. Here, for 194 countries we combine aquatic food production, distribution and consumption data with corresponding national policy documents and, drawing on theories of social justice, explore whether barriers to participation explain unequal distributions of benefits. Using Bayesian models, we find economic and political barriers are associated with lower wealth-based benefits; countries produce and consume less when wealth, formal education and voice and accountability are lacking. In contrast, social barriers are associated with lower welfare-based benefits; aquatic foods are less affordable where gender inequality is greater. Our analyses of policy documents reveal a frequent failure to address political and gender-based barriers. However, policies linked to more just food system outcomes centre principles of human rights, specify inclusive decision-making processes and identify and challenge drivers of injustice. 

The worldwide decline of coral reefs necessitates targeting management solutions that can sustain reefs and the livelihoods of the people who depend on them. However, little is known about the context in which different reef management tools can help to achieve multiple social and ecological goals. Because of nonlinearities in the likelihood of achieving combined fisheries, ecological function, and biodiversity goals along a gradient of human pressure, relatively small changes in the context in which management is implemented could have substantial impacts on whether these goals are likely to be met. Critically, management can provide substantial conservation benefits to most reefs for fisheries and ecological function, but not biodiversity goals, given their degraded state and the levels of human pressure they face.