Societal Impacts. The wider impacts of cooperative traffic management give rise to a number of issues. Topics and issues that arise in this include: • The effects of improvements in vehicle tracking. Road user charging moving beyond charging for consumption through fuel duty then becomes more practical. There are also implications for enforcement of traffic regulations and wider enforcement. Commonplace vehicle tracking also raises issues of privacy. • Improved accessibility for older drivers, and an increased comfort for all making driving safer. • Payment for the costs of cooperative systems. Some benefits will be immediately clear to users but others may be less clear and in some case the benefits may accrue to others and elsewhere in society as a whole.
Societal Impacts. The evolution of European food systems has had far-reaching societal impacts, notably on food security, nutrition, and the sector’s contribution to the economy. Food security The great achievement of European agriculture since the 1960s has been a tremendous increase in agricultural output, comprising largely of specialization in a few key items and a decline in the pro- duction of others. This has led to a substantial decrease in the real prices of food, reducing food insecurity in Europe and contributing to greater consumer choice. The most fundamental impact of advancements in agriculture since the 1960s has been to increase output so substantially as to far outpace demand, providing an abundant quantity of food, reducing prices, and thereby driving profound societal transformations. The drastic increases in productivity achieved as a result of the practices described above allowed Europe to escape the food insecurity it faced after World War II and to provide people with more wealth (as a result of lower expenditure on food) and choice. One of the main effects of overproductivity has been a fall in commodity prices globally (illustrated by Figure 17), which has helped enable access to relatively cheap food for a majority of Europeans. Figure 17: Commodity prices in the long run. Source: USDA, 2016.9 Nutrition These food system transformations have had a two-stage impact on nutrition in Europe. First, in- creases in production have had a positive impact by increasing overall calorie availability and di- versifying food choices. These positive impacts of adequate access to food have therefore enabled 9 xxxxx://xxx.xxx.xxxx.xxx/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=76964 people to live active, productive, and healthy lives. At the other extreme of this nutritional spec- trum, Europe has more recently witnessed the emergence of a negative health burden from die- tary issues due to a diverse range of non-communicable diseases, notably obesity. It is important to note, however, that important disparities in access and nutrition persist to this day, with about 3 million people in Eastern Europe (inside and outside of the EU) still undernourished (IAASTD, 2009). On the other hand, food-related health challenges as a result of overconsumption or poor nutrition, such as obesity, heart disease, and diabetes, have proliferated at a very rapid pace in recent years. This is not only a European challenge but a global phenomenon due to what is de- ...
