Work on the global architecture of food systems finance, shared at the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit, identified investment needs of $350 billion per year for driving transformation. The losses we already incur as a result of ongoing unsustainable practices are staggering, and affect all nations.
The Food System Economics Commission found in its landmark global policy report that we have so far spent, lost, or wasted nearly $132 trillion just since April 2016, when the Paris Agreement was signed. Those costs affect all areas of everyday human activity, and include impacts on human health, wellbeing, and longevity. The Commission also found that:
“The net benefits of achieving a food system transformation are worth 5 to 10 trillion USD a year, equivalent to between 4 and 8 percent of global GDP in 2020.”
The world is beginning to recognize in practical terms the real consequences of unsustainable food systems. At COP28, 162 countries endorsed the UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action, committing to reorient agricultural support towards more sustainable practices. This was a breakthrough resulting from several years of coalition efforts, involving hundreds of civil society organizations, key frontrunner governments, and sustained advocacy from institutions producing world-leading science and delivering aid to people in need.
Now, the task is to mobilize resources—from public, private, multilateral, and philanthropic actors—to drive the transition and reward those who lead, especially smallholders and other front-line carriers of risk. Some believe the $350 billion should be one slice of the overall global climate finance commitment, but it is important to remember that not all food systems transformation needs fit narrowly into formally defined categories of climate change mitiation or adaptation.
In June 2024, CCI hosted an Interparliamentary Exchange, where a key topic was the destabilizing effects of desertification, ecosystem breakdown, and resulting forced internal displacement. The summary statement from that gathering noted:
“Poverty is an obstacle to transformation of everyday practices [and] Climate-capable small and medium-sized enterprises can bring sustainable finance and innovation to local economies.”
All of these perspectives informed the COP29 side event co-hosted by CCI, The FAIRR Initiative, The Good Food Finance Network, and The TAPP Coalition, on Friday, November 15, in Baku, Azerbaijan.
This event brought together key leaders, experts, and advocates, to discuss realigning public support for the agrifood sector, to achieve climate goals, and catalytic financial innovations to ensure delivery of climate finance to those leading on food systems.
The entire event was chaired and moderated by Danielle Nierenberg, President of Food Tank.
Changing government financial policies for a Paris-aligned agri-food sector
The first panel, led by the TAPP Coalition and FAIRR Initiative, focused on changing government financial policies for a Paris-aligned agri-food sector. FAIRR has focused its attention on shifting investment practices, to support expansion of alternative proteins and reduction of harmful practices across food systems, including a key priority of reducing anti-microbial resistance from overuse of antibiotics in farm animals.
The TAPP Coalition joined with the Africa Climate Action Initiative, bringing together 180 civil society organizations, and four nations—the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, and Uganda—to release the COP29 declaration on GHG emission pricing in food systems.
The Declaration calls for:
“transitioning away from animal protein overconsumption according to national or global dietary guidelines by implementing GHG-Emission pricing mechanisms in agri-food systems.”
Willem Branten, speaking for the TAPP Coalition called on high-consuming wealthy countries to transition to more sustainable food systems. He noted the need to align agricultural policies, including incentives and subsidies, with sustainable levels of production and consumption, to protect the health of people and nature, and to operate within planetary boundaries.
Trinto Mugangu—COP29 Climate Advisor for the African Climate Action Initiative—highlighted the importance of national policies on agriculture and food systems, to shape outcomes for people and for the climate.
Lasse Bruun—Director of Climate and Food at the UN Foundation—focused on subsidies and how they shape our food systems. He noted subsidies now prioritize mechanized, chemically intensive, industrial agriculture, which destroys ecosystems, pollutes watersheds, and contributes to climate disruption, while comparatively little is devoted to sustainable, health-building food production practices and product distribution.
Good Food Finance to accelerate cooperative climate action
The second panel focused on innovative sustainable finance to accelerate cooperative climate action. CCI’s food systems work emphasizes the potential of non-market cooperation in line with Article 6.8 of the Paris Agreement to motivate accelerated climate action, including the delivery of good food finance.
A key area of work for the Good Food Finance Network is the role of innovative co-investments to realize, deliver, and scale the benefits of climate-smart food-realted trade, finance, innovation, and data, to local human development. The key question is how to deliver climate benefits, health benefits, local and national macroeconomic benefits, and improved outcomes for investors and beneficiaries, throughout the web of value creation.
Myra L. Jackson—Earth Law Center, Focal point on Climate Change and Global Restoration Collaborative, Core Member, and a Board Member of CCI—emphasized the importance of stopping the destruction of nature. Even as we seek to find nutrition and provide for the health and wellbeing of 8 billion people, our approach to doing so is destroying nature’s ability to produce sufficient food reliably. She urged all to treat the planet as a living thing and to foster, honor, and act in service of the rights of nature.
Zitouni Ould-Dada—a world-renowed leader in UN food systems response and a senior advisor to the FAIRR Initiative—talked about the importance of trust for making success possible in complex work like this. He talked about the need for people to believe in the quality of leadership and decision-making at global policy processes like the COP29.
Dr. Michael Terungwa David—CCI Africa Coordinator and Founder of the Global Initiative for Food Security and Ecosystem Preservation (GIFSEP)—focused on the indispensable role of political will in advancing climate solutions. He underscored the need for consistency in civic action and engagement, sharing a personal account of his team’s persistent efforts to engage a policymakers. Echoing the call for trust-building, he described relationship-building over time as a key lever for building political will and improving policy design and outcomes for affected communities.
CCI has proposed a multilateral Green Nutrition Security Pact, that would operate in line with Article 6.8 of the Paris Agreement, spreading climate value while building local economies and expanding the reach of sustainable, affordable, health-building food. In May, CCI released the Good Food Finance Network’s Blueprint for Data Systems Integration—a report on year 1 of 5-year innovation sprint launched at the 2023 AIM For Climate Summit.
A key ingredient of climate-related food production is the connection between upstream actors and downstream outcomes. Innovative sustainable budgeting and capital allocation processes and debt-reducing watershed resilience bonds, and other de-risking mechanisms, could play a key role in mobilization of climate-related food finance.
Explore an expanded resource library and the latest updated information at the interactive event page.
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