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Food systems are primary drivers of human and environmental health, but the understanding of their diverse and dynamic co-transformation remains limited. We use a data-driven approach to disentangle different development pathways of national food systems (i.e. ‘transformation archetypes’) based on historical, intertwined trends of food system structure (agricultural inputs and outputs and food trade), and social and environmental outcomes (malnutrition, biosphere integrity, and greenhouse gases emissions) for 161 countries, from 1995 to 2015. We found that whilst agricultural total factor productivity has consistently increased globally, a closer analysis suggests a typology of three transformation archetypes across countries: rapidly expansionist, expansionist, and consolidative. Expansionist and rapidly expansionist archetypes increased in agricultural area, synthetic fertilizer use, and gross agricultural output, which was accompanied by malnutrition, environmental pressures, and lasting socioeconomic disadvantages. The lowest rates of change in key structure metrics were found in the consolidative archetype. Across all transformation archetypes, agricultural greenhouse gases emissions, synthetic fertilizer use, and ecological footprint of consumption increased faster than the expansion of agricultural area, and obesity levels increased more rapidly than undernourishment decreased. The persistence of these unsustainable trajectories occurred independently of improvements in productivity. Our results underscore the importance of quantifying the multiple human and environmental dimensions of food systems transformations and can serve as a starting point to identify potential leverage points for sustainability transformations. More attention is thus warranted to alternative development pathways able of delivering equitable benefits to both productivity and to human and environmental health.

The sustainability science literature views the participation of local stakeholders as a necessary element for both conducting transdisciplinary research and implementing sustainable development projects. However, there is very little critical reflection on how power dynamics between researchers and local stakeholders affect the success of participatory processes. This article draws on the critical tradition of political science and sociology to examine how power dynamics are inherent to, and should always be a concern during, participatory processes. This also applies for sustainability science research and the implementation of sustainable development projects, especially in developing contexts such as those of Africa. While local participation enhances the voices of local stakeholders, power dynamics between them and the researchers driving these processes can dampen local voices or elide critical pieces of information. Using evidence from participatory workshops in Djibouti and Kenya, we demonstrate that these power dynamics can unintentionally exclude critical knowledge and perspectives from the formal proceedings of participatory workshops, despite an express focus on stakeholder inclusion and participatory methods. Using Steven Lukes’ tripartite conception of power, we elicit how the workshop structure and the actions of researchers as the designers and facilitators of the workshop may have prevented the emergence of this critical information. The central argument is that reflecting on power will help researchers and practitioners identify the power dynamics inherent in the participatory processes so they can work to overcome them. Such self-reflection can strengthen sustainability science and practice in African and other contexts.

Non-technical summary Resilience is a cross-disciplinary concept that is relevant for understanding the sustainability of the social and environmental conditions in which we live. Most research normatively focuses on building or strengthening resilience, despite growing recognition of the importance of breaking the resilience of, and thus transforming, unsustainable social-ecological systems. Undesirable resilience (cf. lock-ins, social-ecological traps), however, is not only less explored in the academic literature, but its understanding is also more fragmented across different disciplines. This disparity can inhibit collaboration among researchers exploring interdependent challenges in sustainability sciences. In this article, we propose that the term lock-in may contribute to a common understanding of undesirable resilience across scientific fields. Technical summary Resilience is an extendable concept that bridges the social and life sciences. Studies increasingly interpret resilience normatively as a desirable property of social-ecological systems, despite growing awareness of resilient properties leading to social and ecological degradation, vulnerability or barriers that hinder sustainability transformations (i.e., 'undesirable' resilience). This is the first study to qualify, quantify and compare the conceptualization of 'desirable' and 'undesirable' resilience across academic disciplines. Our literature analysis found that various synonyms are used to denote undesirable resilience (e.g., path dependency, social-ecological traps, institutional inertia). Compared to resilience as a desirable property, research on undesirable resilience is substantially less frequent and scattered across distinct scientific fields. Amongst synonyms for undesirable resilience, the term lock-in is more frequently and evenly used across academic disciplines. We propose that lock-in therefore has the potential to reconcile diverse interpretations of the mechanisms that constrain system transformation - explicitly and coherently addressing characteristics of reversibility and plausibility - and thus enabling integrative understanding of social-ecological system dynamics. Social media summary 'Lock-in' as a bridging concept for interdisciplinary understanding of barriers to desirable sustainability transitions.