Over the next 18 months, we have a real opportunity to converge around the food-climate-nature nexus.
When the curtains came down on COP28, the UN climate summit last year, it was a milestone in the global climate-food policy landscape. Food systems finally had its rightful place on the global climate agenda with a political declaration signed by 159 countries that stated a commitment to include food and agriculture in their updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs), due by COP30 in 2025. This outcome was years in the making with many actors—from civil society, governments, philanthropy, and frontline communities—pushing for food systems inclusion in the climate agenda.
2023 was a milestone year for bold calls for food system transformation for another reason, too: the FAO’s first estimate on the hidden, global cost of food made headlines. The UN agency calculated a staggering $12 trillion a year in hidden costs, from health systems impacted by soaring diet-related illnesses to soil and waterways polluted from fossil-fuel-based food systems to the low wages and economic precarity of workers in the agrifood sector.
At the Global Alliance of the Future of Food—a strategic alliance of two dozen philanthropic organizations working on transforming food systems—our origin story is linked to grappling with and exposing the hidden costs in the food system. More than a decade ago, founding members of the Global Alliance came together and recognized that a systems approach was necessary to expose the costs and consequences of a broken food sector, defined by increasing corporate control, influences of vested interests, and the effects of billions of dollars in harmful subsidies.
Through this collective understanding grew one of the allied initiatives of the Global Alliance, the True Cost Accounting Accelerator, a platform that focuses on mainstreaming true cost accounting to guide decision-makers and other stakeholders on assessing the real costs while planning policy and to uplift the narrative on the hidden costs of food beyond what is visible on supermarket shelves.
With increasing attention on the true cost of food and recognition of food as a key climate crisis driver and key to solutions, we must build on that momentum. With collaborative action and advocacy, the next 18 months could deliver real action. There is a real opportunity for all of us—and from our vantage point for philanthropy, specifically—to focus our collective vision and harness our resources to break down silos and find solutions that converge around food, climate, energy, and nature.
In October this year at the UN Biodiversity Summit this October in Cali, Colombia, where countries must present new national biodiversity plans, there is an opportunity to ensure the inclusion of ecologically grounded food systems. Protecting nature and biodiversity is integral to food and agriculture and we know food production cannot be at the cost of decimating our forests and ecosystems. That’s why we’re thrilled to see how agroecology—a term that refers to practice, science, and movement for a food system working with nature and people at its heart—has been documented to deliver explicit benefits to biodiversity, especially at the landscape level, with links to preserving soil health, forests, water, seeds, and livestock. There are clear entry points to incorporate agroecological approaches into the landmark Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, an outcome from the UN Biodiversity Conference in 2022, through Target 10 of the framework that speaks to the links between food, agriculture, and ecosystems.
With a focus at this year’s COP29 on agreeing to a new long-term climate finance goal, the need for funding towards transforming food systems, particularly for adaptation measures and rural livelihoods protection, must gain traction. Expectations are high for COP30 in Brazil to bring food systems even closer to the climate and nature agenda but we must start laying the foundation for this integration and the Brazilian G20 Presidency through its leadership role is elevating food systems transformation this year.
On the road to COP30, we must build on early gains from addressing the food-energy nexus, including by pushing for a fossil fuel phaseout that addresses the 15% use of fossil fuels in food systems and tackles the one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, land use change, fertilizers and livestock.
In this critical moment, there is leadership around the world. Countries like Tanzania are ready to implement national agricultural policies that incorporate agroecological approaches. National leaders are helping to build regional interest, as the government of Tanzania is with other leaders in the region from Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda.
A growing coalition of philanthropic organizations, coordinated by the Global Alliance, have committed to scaling up funding for agroecological and regenerative farming and are calling on others from philanthropy, governments, and multilateral banks to scale up investments at least tenfold to redirect $430 billion a year towards agroecology and regenerative approaches.
While this cost may seem high, it is lower than the $630 billion a year that is pumped into agriculture subsidies, more than half of which are distortive and harmful.
Communities working the land and fishing the waters provide us compelling evidence that their everyday reality of dealing with devastating climate shocks, water scarcity, and biodiversity loss offers solutions growing out of local and Indigenous knowledge to address these interlocking crises. We can complement these local efforts by listening and understanding how we can advance greater impact by ensuring action on food systems that work for people and the planet are at the heart of international action on biodiversity and climate—and that public and private funding flows support it.