Giving Compass' Take:

• Food Tank interviews Marc Buckley, advocate for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, about approaching the SDGs from a larger perspective — everything within the food and agriculture ecosystem is connected.

• Are we doing enough to look beyond the buzzword of "sustainability" in the ag sector, throughout all supply chains? Buckley explains how to push for more resilient systems, and sees that opportunity abounds.

• Here's a pathway to training 100,000 sustainability professionals and entrepreneurs.

Marc Buckley is calling for “a paradigm shift in how we view the world.” This food leader and advocate for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) wants us to think differently: “We as humanity have gotten into this modus of looking at things very straight and linear, putting everything in boxes and silos,” he tells Food Tank, “but that’s not how our world works. Our world works in complex, dynamic systems.”

Marc wears many hats. In addition to serving as a U.N. SDG Advocate, he is the co-founder and CEO of the food and beverage company ANJA GmbH & Co. KG (Adaptive Nutrition, Joint Achievements) and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network. He also works with the World Food Programme and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Though he speaks at events all over the world, he tells Food Tank that “the things I talk about are really hard to do in an elevator pitch or a TED Talk because they are based on complexity and systems thinking.”

Marc tells Food Tank that “all 17 SDGs are tied to food, agriculture, and the food and beverage industry,” as shown in the wedding cake model by Johann Rockström, Director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and Pavan Sukhdev, Study Leader of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB). The SDGs, Marc explains, not only reflect “the very basics of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,” but also are interconnected through resources like those we need to make food.

Read the full interview with Marc Buckley about going beyond sustainability by Miranda Carver Martin at Food Tank