Legal Safeguards for Food Security in the Context of ESG Transformation in the Agricultural Sector

The article provides a comprehensive scientific and legal analysis of the legal guarantees of food security in Ukraine under the conditions of ESG transformation of the agricultural sector through the prism of modern agricultural law doctrine. It is substantiated that, in the context of martial law, global climate change, and European integration, food security acquires the character of a complex interdisciplinary legal category combining constitutional guarantees of the human right to adequate food with the principles of sustainable agricultural development. Within the system of agricultural law, food security is defined as an independent direction of legal regulation related to the rational use of agricultural land, stability of agricultural production, and proper functioning of agri-food markets. The article analyzes the regulatory framework for ensuring food security, including the provisions of the Constitution of Ukraine, land and environmental legislation, legal acts on environmental impact assessment, anti-corruption regulation and corporate governance, as well as relevant international legal instruments and approaches developed by FAO, OECD, and the EU acquis in the field of sustainable development. Particular attention is paid to the role of implementing European standards of non-financial reporting and sustainable finance in modernizing agricultural legal regulation. The environmental, social, and governance components of legal guarantees of food security are examined as structural elements of the agricultural legal mechanism. The environmental dimension covers the protection of land and water resources, preservation of soil fertility, and climate change adaptation; the social dimension includes guarantees of decent working conditions, support for small and medium-sized producers, and ensuring food accessibility; the governance dimension encompasses transparency, accountability, and proper corporate control in the agricultural sector. It is concluded that the integration of ESG principles transforms both the subject matter and the method of agricultural law, forming a new model of legal guarantees of food security as a multi-level system of norms, principles, and institutions. The necessity of further development of agricultural law doctrine and harmonization of Ukrainian legislation with European approaches is substantiated in order to ensure the resilience of Ukraine’s agri-food system in the face of military, economic, and climate challenges. The methodological framework of the article is based on a combination of general scientific and special legal methods, including the dialectical, systemic, formal-legal, and comparative-legal approaches. The systemic method made it possible to examine food security as a multidimensional legal category within the context of ESG transformation of the agricultural sector. The formal-legal analysis was applied to study national legislation, including the Constitution of Ukraine, relevant UN instruments, and documents of FAO and OECD, as well as the EU acquis. The comparative-legal method and legal forecasting were used to substantiate directions for harmonizing Ukrainian legislation with sustainable development principles and ESG standards.