In the face of continuous population growth, environmental degradation, climate extremes and enduring abject poverty, ensuring sustainability of the food system is of crucial importance. As such, developing a comprehensive measure of sustainability has been of a great interest for both researchers and policy makers so as to measure progresses and evaluate the outcomes overtime. This paper attempts to assess the food system sustainability (FSSI) in Ethiopia over the past two decades from 2001 to 2020. A composite index was constructed by aggregating 24 selected food system indicators in the four food system dimensions: environmental, economic, social, and food and nutrition security. ‘Distance to a Reference’ method was employed for data normalization, whereas equal weighting and linear aggregation methods were used for aggregating the indicators in each dimension. The result showed that in a scale from 0 to 1, better score was achieved in the social dimension (0.66), followed by environmental dimension (0.52), and food and nutrition dimension (0.43), with the least recorded in the economic dimension (0.31) in 2020. The overall Food System Sustainability Index for the most recent year (2020) was estimated to be 0.46 which is far below a satisfactory level of food system sustainability (0.75) as per OECD Classification of Sustainability Indices. The result calls for policy interventions aimed at improving the overall food system sustainability in light of the four food system dimensions, in general, and the weak dimensions, in particular. Given the predictable need for more food production in the face of growing populace, interventions that enhance synergies and limit the potential trade-off among the food system outcomes, as well as striking the right balance should be the policy direction for Ethiopia.

中文翻译：

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衡量埃塞俄比亚粮食系统的可持续性：多维视角

面对人口持续增长、环境退化、极端气候和持续赤贫，确保粮食系统的可持续性至关重要。因此，制定全面的可持续性衡量标准引起了研究人员和政策制定者的极大兴趣，以便衡量进展并评估长期结果。本文试图评估埃塞俄比亚从 2001 年到 2020 年过去二十年的粮食系统可持续性（FSSI）。通过汇总环境、经济、社会和粮食系统四个维度中的 24 个选定的粮食系统指标，构建了一个综合指数。粮食和营养安全。采用“参考距离”法对数据进行归一化处理，对各维度指标进行聚合时采用等权法和线性聚合法。结果显示，在0到1的量表中，社会维度得分较高（0.66），其次是环境维度（0.52）和食品与营养维度（0.43），经济维度得分最低（ 2020 年，粮食系统可持续发展指数估计为 0.31）。最近一年（2020 年）的总体粮食系统可持续发展指数估计为 0.46，远低于经合组织可持续发展指数分类中粮食系统可持续发展令人满意的水平（0.75）。结果呼吁采取政策干预措施，针对粮食系统的四个总体维度，特别是薄弱维度，提高整体粮食系统的可持续性。鉴于人口不断增长，对增加粮食生产的需求可预见，埃塞俄比亚的政策方向应该是加强协同作用、限制粮食系统成果之间潜在权衡以及实现适当平衡的干预措施。