Growing, processing and transporting food accounts for one-third of all global greenhouse gas emissions, but just 3% of public climate finance goes to food systems. Untapped Opportunities: Climate Financing for Food Systems Transformation presents the case for food systems as a climate solution and priority, with recommendations for action. This includes the need to align public financial flows to food systems with climate ambition and action plans, and channelling public climate finance into food systems to support policies, programs, and projects that deliver on climate goals and a host of co-benefits for biodiversity, health, and food system resilience.

Despite the potential for climate mitigation and adaptation, food systems are consistently underestimated and underfunded. This report is designed to inform policy development and implementation, climate advocacy, and climate finance structures, with clear recommendations and opportunities for directing climate finance to food systems as a climate solution.

• Global governments are only directing 3 percent of their climate dollars toward food and agriculture systems.
• At the same time, a much larger amount of public money is being spent to prop up food and agriculture practices that can undermine climate action, such as the expansion of industrial beef and dairy production—and 70 percent of countries’ climate plans don’t include any details on how they will take action on food.
Excerpts from the report:
• Investing in food systems transformation is a cost-effective way for the climate finance community to achieve huge emissions reductions.
• An estimated USD 300 to 350 billion is needed every year through 2030 to support the transition to sustainable and climate-resilient food systems.
• In the past 5 years, only USD 9.3 billion per year in public climate finance was directed to food systems measures — a fraction of the USD 321 billion that was delivered for climate mitigation.
According to the analysis of developing countries’ NDCs, food systems priorities are commonly underestimated and underfunded.
• Developing countries declare funding needs of USD 14 billion per year to implement food systems actions;
• By contrast, they estimate finance needs of USD 64 billion for energy and transport measures.
• Developing countries should include more detailed food systems priorities and funding needs in their NDCs to mobilize climate finance.
• In turn, developed countries must significantly increase the amount of climate finance provided for food systems action in developing countries.
• Public climate finance provided to food systems has quadrupled in the past 5 years, increasing from USD 1.7 billion per year by 2016 to USD 9.3 billion per year by 2020.
• Efforts to continue this trend will be needed to keep the achievement of the Paris Agreement goals within reach.
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• The narrow focus on high yields, extensive use of chemicals in agriculture, concentrated livestock production, and extractive land and water practices is damaging ecosystem health, threatening and destroying biodiversity, and driving greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (see Figure 1 on the page).
• The adoption of monocultural landscapes for food production has significantly eroded global soils and hindered nature’s capacity to regenerate.
• Loss of biodiversity from deforestation and the destruction of natural ecosystems has also increased the risk of disease transmission from animals to humans.
To make matters worse,
• We are losing and wasting 40% of all the food we produce.
• Global food losses amount to more than 10% of the world’s energy consumption,
• While food systems in total account for around 30% of the world’s energy use.
• Even if significant technological changes in food production and storage practices are introduced, the efficiency gains will not be enough to reduce the food systems emissions significantly without other mitigation and adaptation interventions. See also: BOX 1: WHY INDUSTRIAL FOOD SYSTEMS FAIL US and FIGURE 1. EMISSIONS FROM FOOD SYSTEMS ACCOUNT FOR 33% OF GLOBAL EMISSIONS
According to the Food and Land Use Coalition,
• We need USD 300 to 350 billion per year to implement actions needed to transform our food systems (see Figure 2).
• These investments are achievable: Even the top-end estimate is equal to less than 0.5% of the global gross domestic product in 2020.
• Finance is needed to protect and restore nature, adopt regenerative agricultural practices, shift to healthier diets, diversify protein supplies, reduce food loss and waste, and build stronger rural livelihoods and local food systems, among others.
• All of these have strong mitigation benefits and can help to build climate resilience.
• Without climate finance dedicated to food systems actions, we will not be able to meet the 1.5°C (2.7°F) target of the Paris Agreement or build food systems resilience against climate change.
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• Only 4% of finance needs quantified in the NDCs of developing countries are earmarked for implementing food system measures, despite land-based measures in these countries having potential to provide almost one-fifth of global mitigation needed to meet the 1.5°C (2.7°F) target of the Paris Agreement
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• Of the total USD 632 billion in climate finance delivered during 2019–20, USD 509 billion was channelled to mitigation activities in the energy and transport sectors,
• while only 14 billion went to land-use activities and
• the rest was channelled to water, infrastructure, and cross-sectoral activities.

“The vision being pushed for agriculture [at COP27] is one that tinkers around the edges of an industrial system,” said Shefali Sharma, the director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) in Europe, during the event. As a result, she said, they may reduce greenhouse gas emissions per unit of food by continuing to intensify and consolidate production, but it won’t lead to overall reductions in emissions. “The real test is whether we’re creating systems change toward reducing agriculture’s overall climate footprint,” she said.