Climate disruption and nature loss are putting food systems at risk. To avoid the destabilizing effects of pervasive food insecurity, urgent action is needed to improve food-related finance, and how we measure success.
- 52 years ago, the world agreed to stop destroying natural systems we cannot create or replicate, on which all other human activity and achievement ultimately depends.
- 32 years ago, the world agreed to prevent dangerous climate change and desertification, and to protect and preserve biological diversity, yet climate pollution levels keep rising. How all of that would happen would be decided much later—with the 2015 agreements on Financing for Development, Disaster Risk Reduction, Sustainable Development, and the Paris Climate Agreement, and the 2022 Global Biodiversity Framework.
- It was only in 2023 that the world agreed, finally, to work for conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity in most of the ocean—the “areas beyond national jurisdiction” that comprise 49% of the surface of the Earth and the vast majority of the volume of the climate and biosphere.
We are far behind where we need to be, to experience sustainable human development in harmony with nature, and costs are expanding, fast.
- In 2022, the Global Turning Point report found $178 trillion would be lost by 2070, if we do not mitigate global climate disruption.
- In January 2024, the Food System Economics Commission found that unsustainable food systems alone have already cost the world $123.6 trillion, just since the Paris Agreement was signed 8 years ago.
Beyond the cost of the waste generated by food systems as they are, there are impacts to health, degradation of nature, and the ever greater dependency on chemical inputs. Food systems are under threat from climate change, nature loss, conflict, and trade policy, and from outdated financial models. Shifting to climate-resilient food production practices can reinvigorate and diversify rural livelihoods, attract new investment, and scale back the spreading threat of hunger-related destabilization, mass migration, and conflict.
As I noted in a recent op-ed in The Hill:
Food shortages can have cascading effects that create instability within nations and lead to mass migrations that affect neighboring countries. A working paper from the IMF released last December found that 184 million people currently live outside their country of origin. The report said, “Climate events affect the habitability and income productivity of various countries, and – going forward – are also expected to compound the impact of the other drivers of human mobility and migration, such as poverty, demographics, or political instability.”
Biodiversity and the integrity of watersheds and ecosystems are also critical ingredients for not only sustainable food systems, but food that builds health reliably for people. Plants adapt to their environment and develop biomolecular composition suited to maintaining health in the face of local threats. Plants grown in healthier soil, in richer ecological conditions, with more competition and a wider diversity of biomolecular inputs, can better develop, retain, and express health-building properties, creating better conditions for human health.
Climate disruption makes it harder to maintain healthy ecosystems and safeguard the biodiversity needed for more resilient, diverse, and well-adapted crops.
- The Periodic Table of Food Initiative is working to map the biomolecular composition of foods, across the world, to make it easier to identify food that is health for both people and planet.
- The Good Food Finance Network’s Integrated Data Systems Initiative is preparing for exploratory integrations of financial and non-financial data systems, to provide better data for decision-makers.
- The Food Trails Impact Investors Living Lab developed a Roadmap for Scaling Investment in Urban Food Systems, which covered 8 priority areas of work, from Impact to Data, Scaling, and Community.
The Climate Value Exchange is starting to develop resilience intelligence metrics and strategies, to support investment in climate value for all. Unless we start to recognize, and value, and direct investment toward, those activities that build climate value, we will see mainstream investment continuing to work against better outcomes for most people and for the health of natural systems.
Originally published April 24, 2024, through the Climate Value Exchange.
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