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Global actions for a sustainable phosphorus future

Nature Food volume 2, pages 71–74 (2021)Cite this article

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Food security and healthy freshwater ecosystems are placed at jeopardy by poor phosphorus management. Scientists are calling for transformation across food, agriculture, waste and other sectors — mobilized through intergovernmental action, which has been missing thus far.

Unsustainable phosphorus use is pushing food security further from reach1,2, leaving a legacy of polluted freshwaters, many now beyond ecological restoration3. Ten years have passed since the global anthropogenic flow of phosphorus was identified to be exceeding its planetary boundary4. In 2013, the opportunity was highlighted for a 20% improvement in nutrient use efficiency by 2020 across the full chain of food and waste systems5. The working group of the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework proposed to reduce pollution from excess nutrients by 50% by 20306. Yet, phosphorus management remains largely ignored in the food and environmental policy agendas of most countries and international conventions7. Progress remains hindered by a lack of policy and public awareness, fragmentation of actions and policies, and the absence of intergovernmental coordination.

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Fig. 1: The global phosphorus system.

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Acknowledgements

This paper was produced as part of the following projects: the ‘Our Phosphorus Future’ project funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC; award no. NE/P008798/1) with support from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) / Global Environment Facility (GEF) through the GEF/UNEP-CEH ‘Towards the International Nitrogen Management System’ project (GEF project ID 5400). Further support was provided by the European Sustainable Phosphorus Platform; the UK Global Food Security Programme-supported ‘RePhoKUs’ project (award no. BB/R005842/1); and the NERC LTS-ODA ‘SUNRISE’ Programme.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Edinburgh, UK

    Will J. Brownlie, Mark A. Sutton & Bryan M. Spears

  2. School of GeoSciences, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Will J. Brownlie, David S. Reay & Kate V. Heal

  3. Proman Management GmbH, Auersthal, Austria

    Ludwig Hermann

  4. EasyMining Germany, Berlin, Germany

    Christian Kabbe

Authors
  1. Will J. Brownlie
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  2. Mark A. Sutton
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  3. David S. Reay
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  4. Kate V. Heal
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  5. Ludwig Hermann
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  6. Christian Kabbe
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  7. Bryan M. Spears
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Contributions

W.J.B. co-conceived the idea of the manuscript, led the writing of the paper, and collated and conducted data analysis. M.A.S., D.S.R., K.V.H., L.H. and C.K. contributed to writing the paper. B.M.S. co-conceived the idea of the manuscript, was the principal investigator of the project that supported this work and contributed to writing the paper.

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Correspondence to Will J. Brownlie.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Food thanks Martin Blackwell and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Brownlie, W.J., Sutton, M.A., Reay, D.S. et al. Global actions for a sustainable phosphorus future. Nat Food 2, 71–74 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00232-w

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