Global food systems will need to produce food more efficiently and sustainably to feed a growing population, achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (‘SDGs’) and meet the 2°C climate commitments of the Paris Agreement. As climate change affects food systems, governments, food and agriculture companies, and public and private investors need to better identify and address the numerous climate related risks they face. However, this can also be an inflection point to take advantage of new investment opportunities that the transformation to sustainable, low-carbon and resilient food systems presents. This will require addressing core market failures to move sustainable land-use financing into the mainstream to unlock the private investment needed.
In order to identify the most effective way to move from niche to mainstream, the proponents developed the “Financing the Transformation of Food Systems Under a Changing Climate” report. This report builds on a scenario analysis workshop and an extensive expert consultation with leading food and agriculture companies, asset managers and institutional investors among others, to identify how to reorient and leverage financial flows towards sustainable land-use. As a result, a sustainable finance roadmap was developed to provide a diverse set of policy options, innovative sustainable finance solutions, and strategies to advise governments, food and agriculture companies, public and private donors and investors on how they can support the transformation to low-carbon and resilient food systems.
This “white paper” for the session at the GLF Investment Case 2019 in Luxembourg and the panel discussion are structured around the “Financing the Transformation of Food Systems under a Changing Climate” report, which explores innovative avenues to address the following core market failures:
- Lack of deep pipeline of bankable projects, today
- High investment risk and lack of primary data/information asymmetries
- Lack of intermediation to efficiently connect different pools of capital to investment
CCAFS and its partners highlight in the report, and below, a diverse set of policy options, innovative sustainable finance solutions, and strategies for how to unlock sustainable finance to support the transformation to low-carbon and resilient food systems.
