EAS Seminar: Patrick Webb (Cornell)

Why Food System Transformation Matters as a Global Development and Climate Change Priority

The 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission Report (EAT-Lancet 2.0) built on the original 2019 framework by updating work on planetary boundaries and using advanced economic modeling to inform policy options. That report presents a roadmap for restructuring global food production marketing and consumption to achieve human health and sustainability goals simultaneously. This talk lays out related arguments for why food system transformation is such a critical priority for global development, climate and the environment; and why it's so challenging to achieve given the countless tradeoffs involved.

Bio: Patrick Webb is the inaugural executive director of the Ashley School of Global Development and the Environment at Cornell University. For the past 40 years, Patrick has been engaged in scholarship, teaching and outreach, advising policymakers, and managing complex multi-country research operations on the ground. He lived 6 years in Africa (Ethiopia, Niger, The Gambia) and works on food systems transformation, food and nutrition policies, humanitarian response, and planetary environmental challenges. He holds a Ph.D. in geography from Birmingham University in England and has been a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society since 1982. Before joining Cornell, Patrick served nine years as Academic Dean at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, as agency-wide Chief Nutritionist for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Chief of Nutrition for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Rome, and Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). In 2024, he was awarded the 'Jean-Pierre Habicht Lifetime Achievements in Global Nutrition Research' Award by the American Society for Nutrition.