We are back with our Think Sustainable Europe podcasts, produced by IEEP with the collaboration of our members of the pan-European network of sustainability think tanks.
In this podcast, our Head of the CAP and Food programme, Melanie Muro, talks about financing the transition to resilient and equitable food systems. To share insights we were joined by Torsten Hasforth, Chief Economist at Danish green think tank, CONCITO, and Olivia Riemer, Programme Lead at TMG – Think Tank for Sustainability, a transdisciplinary research organisation and consultancy firm.
In a recent report, the Global Alliance for the Future of Food put the costs of transitioning to truly sustainable food systems at $430 billion to $500 billion annually. The COP29 in Baku concluded with a deal that sets new financial targets for supporting developing countries. The agreement commits to tripling public climate finance from the previous $100 billion goal to $300 billion annually by 2035. In addition, it aims to scale up contributions from both public and private sectors to reach $1.3 trillion a year by the same deadline. While this is a significant step forward, the real challenge lies in ensuring these funds are directed to where they’re most urgently needed. The analysis by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food highlights that while public climate finance almost doubled between 2017 and 2022 the share allocated to food systems has actually dropped, falling from 3% to just 2.5%. Of that, only 1.5%, or about $9.1 billion, is being invested in sustainable, agroecological food systems.
Listen to our experts to understand the challenges of financing this transition towards sustainable agri-food systems and explore existing tools and policy instruments such as True Cost Accounting and the Emissions Trading System that could support public and private financing for the much-needed transformation of our food systems. We also talk about Denmark, the first country in the world to set a climate tax on emissions from livestock, and investigate if this model could be adopted by other countries.
The podcast is available on our YouTube and Spotify channels.
Further external readings
- (Report) Leveraging True Cost Accounting to Accelerate Agri-Food Systems Transformation (TMG, 2024): https://assets.ctfassets.net/rrirl83ijfda/6MKqVPYFlCii0iOUOS7rkL/5df8b7444240e301807baa857210b452/TMG_FORESEE_series_Report5_TCAforAgri-foodSystemsTransformaiton.pdf
- (Report) Public Climate Finance for Food Systems Transformation (Global Alliance for the Future of Food, 2024): https://futureoffood.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/ga_climatefinancereport_2024.pdf
- (Report) A shared prospect for farming and food in Europe (Strategic Dialogue for the Future of EU Agriculture, 2024): https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/document/download/171329ff-0f50-4fa5-946f-aea11032172e_en?filename=strategic-dialogue-report-2024_en.pdf
- (Report) True Cost Accounting handbook (TMG, 2024): https://tca2f.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/TCA_Agrifood_Handbook.pdf
- (Report) The State of Food and Agriculture 2024 – Value-driven transformation of agrifood systems (FAO, 2024): https://doi.org/10.4060/cd2616en
- (Report) Climate action in a downstream agricultural emissions trading system (CONCITO, 2024): https://concito.dk/files/media/document/Climate%20action%20in%20a%20downstream%20agricultural%20emissions%20trading%20system.pdf
- (Blog) Think piece series exploring True Cost Accounting (TMG, 2024): https://www.tmg-thinktank.com/news/think-piece-series-exploring-true-cost-accounting
- (Blog) Reimagining agrifood systems: from buzzwords to actionable change (FAO, 2024): https://www.fao.org/index.php?id=121243
- (Blog) Paving the Way for Agriculture Emission Reductions – the Danish case (CONCITO, 2024): https://concito.dk/node/3817
