I rarely agree with the World Bank but its new blueprint for addressing food's climate footprint gets a lot right starting with the urgent need for wealthy & some middle-income countries like Brazil to cut meat & dairy subsidies & shift to healthier (lower meat, more plant-centered) diets and more sustainable agriculture.
It also highlights the fact that because food is such a massive GHG emitter (16 gigatons annually), even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated tomorrow, "emissions from agrifood alone are so high that they could by themselves make the world miss the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C by 2050." And yet, the report points out that most climate finance is dedicated to other sectors, such as renewable energy, which receives 51 percent of financing, or low-carbon transportation, which receives 26 percent"
Clearly this needs to change! The report says that "Annual investments will need to increase by an estimated 18 times, to $260 billion a year, to halve current agrifood emissions by 2030 and put the world on track for net zero emissions by 2050."
The report says that "Investing in low-emission agriculture and transforming food and land use could generate health, economic, and environmental benefits totaling $4.3 trillion in 2030,3 a 16-to-1 return on investment costs."
The Bank also rightly says that we still need investment in livestock in low- income countries, but we need to invest in a way that does not destroy forests and biodiversity. I also agree with the Bank that we need to "leverage institutions at the international, national, and subnational levels to facilitate these opportunities while ensuring a just transition through the inclusion of stakeholders like smallholder farmers, women, and Indigenous groups, who are at the front lines of climate change."
It is incredibly satisfying to have a major global institution standing up to the powerful meat and dairy industries and saying clearly what many of us have been arguing for decades. At the same time, the World Bank needs to put its money where its mouth is and shift its own investments away from climate-destroying factory farming systems and monoculture feed and fertilizer production towards more ecological agriculture. It needs to lead by example!
Also, carbon markets and other techno-fixes undermine their vision so their approach to those issues will need to shift.
As the report says: “Now is the time to drastically reorient the agrifood system, as its current form is pushing the planet beyond its operating limits.” “The narrative is clear: to protect our planet, we need to transform the way we produce and consume food.”
The World Bank must start by drastically reorienting its investments and approach to the agrifood system.
Comments