Sustainable sourcing of global agricultural raw materials: Assessing gaps in key impact and vulnerability issues and indicators
For this research article at PlOS One, a comprehensive list of sustainable sourcing issues was collated in order to better structure the complex relationships and assess any gaps. The issues were pulled from the following three perspectives: major global sustainability assessments, sustainability communications from global food companies, and conceptual frameworks of sustainable livelihoods from academic publications. These terms were then integrated across perspectives using a common vocabulary, classified by their relevance to impacts and vulnerabilities, and categorized into groups by economic, environmental, physical, human, social, and political characteristics. These issues were then associated with over 2,000 sustainability indicators gathered from existing sources. A gap analysis was performed to determine if particular issues and issue groups are over or underrepresented. This process resulted in 44 “integrated” issues that are composed of 318 “component” issues. This current network of carefully selected issue and indicators forms a basis for an evolving, dynamic network informed by input from stakeholder partners on the relevant issues and useful, salient, and transparent indicator sets.