Navigating Post-Agenda 2030 Food Environments: Nutrition as a Syndemic in the Digital and Eco-Social Twin Transition (nutriTWIN)

Funded by: Heidelberg Center for the Environment (Booster Call)

Principal Investigators: Tabea Bork-Hüffer, Dr. Merle Müller-Hansen, Lea Loretta Zentgraf

Project Collaborators: Prof. Dr. Thomas Rausch (Centre for Organismal Studies), Prof. Dr. Marcus Koch (Centre for Organismal Studies), Prof. Dr. Till Bärnighausen (Heidelberg Institute for Global Health), Prof. Dr. Renata Motta (Heidelberg Center for Ibero-American Studies), Jun.-Prof. Dr. Rosa Lehmann (Heidelberg Center for Ibero-American Studies), Katie McCorry (Heidelberg Institute of Global Health)

Project Period: 2026

Project Description: As we transition into the post-Agenda 2030 phase, it is increasingly evident that food system transformation cannot be achieved by addressing individual sustainability goals in isolation. Instead, it requires engaging with the mutually reinforcing dynamics of climate change and biodiversity loss, social inequality, shifting lifestyles, evolving dietary patterns, and rapid digitalization. Food environments—referred to in German scholarship as “Lebensmittelumfelder” or “Ernährungsumgebungen” (terms that place comparatively less emphasis on environmental dimensions)—serve as the key arenas where these dynamics converge and materialize. They shape everyday life by influencing household practices, structuring spatial inequalities in access to food, information, and healthcare, and reflecting the ecological and social conditions under which food is produced.

The junior research group nutriTWIN will analyze how food environments in the post-Agenda 2030 phase are shaped by the eco-social and digital twin transitions and to what extent they are intertwined with syndemic nutrition and health dynamics. Key research questions include: (1) How will eco-social and digital transformations change food environments after 2030? (2) To what extent do these transformations generate syndemic risks or resiliences for nutrition and health? (3) What role do biodiversity and food production play in the stability of food environments?

NutriTWIN will address various levels: (I) epistemological, (II) methodological, (III) applied, and (IV) policy-advisory. At the epistemological level, the focus is on the eco-social and digital transformation of syndemic dynamics in food practices across the boundaries of the 2030 Agenda and urban-environmental relationships. Methodologically, co-productive approaches in digital geography will bring together researchers from various disciplines and partners from the field. At the applied level, existing contacts with industry partners will be activated early on, even during the application phase, to explore the economic feasibility of the developed approaches. At the policy level as well, the project aims to involve relevant stakeholders and build on existing contacts in the selected urban-environmental studies in order to work on joint implementations, particularly in light of the soon-to-end Agenda 2030.

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