With Food Systems in the Spotlight at COP28, Philanthropy Tries to Build Momentum

This year’s United Nations climate change summit is putting food and agriculture center stage for the first time, and foundations have helped organize a flurry of announcements to make the most of the moment.

Dozens of philanthropies have signed onto a variety of pledges and statements. Groups are setting ambitious, long-term goals. And funders like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Bezos Earth Fund have announced hundreds of millions of dollars in funding.

“There’s just a proliferation of interest in this work,” said Lauren Baker, deputy director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, which has issued one sign-on statement with members and other organizations, and joined more public calls. “People are focused on it, working on it, trying to figure it out, and working with diverse partners.”

Food systems — from field to fork — account for up to one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions and at least 15% of all fossil fuel use, whether in the form of transportation or agrochemicals. But only 3% of public finance is directed to those systems, based on analysis by the alliance.

This year’s conference, referred to as COP28, kicked off with big goals for food-related climate action. On the first day, organizers released a declaration on sustainable agriculture and food systems signed by 134 heads of state, including countries with major related emissions, such as Brazil, China and the United States, committing to include food in their climate plans by 2025. Organizers have set a detailed agenda to try to make that happen — and have even dedicated, for the first time at a COP, a full day to food.

“The food systems agenda is at an inflection point,” said Haileselassie Medhin, programs director for the People focus area at IKEA Foundation, an alliance member. “We will not make progress in addressing poverty, in addressing food security and hunger, and also in achieving our climate goals, if we do not address the food issue.”

Those solutions will need to look different around the globe, with developed nations tasked with adapting their highly intensive and mechanized practices, and the need for lower-income countries to help small-scale farmers adjust their methods, but transformation is needed everywhere, Medhin said.

There are already signs of challenges to these ambitions. More than 90 signatories, including IKEA Foundation and other philanthropies, joined a letter on Wednesday, less than a week into the conference, expressing “significant concern” that agriculture and food systems were omitted from the draft text of the global stocktake, the accounting process created by the 2015 Paris Agreement that determines the world’s progress on climate action.

“To be clear: The global stocktake cannot deliver its mandate and build a resilient, equitable future for all without considering food systems as a solution for both mitigation and adaptation,” read the letter, whose other signatories included Bezos Earth Fund and the U.K.-based Food Foundation, as well as major green groups like World Wildlife Fund and The Nature Conservancy.

Calling for 10 times more investment

Like world leaders, philanthropies have signed in support of significant targets on food. Perhaps the most ambitious was a call for a tenfold increase in investment in agroecology and regenerative approaches. Organized by the Global Alliance and its members in consultation with a global team of advisors, it was joined by 24 philanthropic groups, including major food funders like IKEA Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation, as well as a large number of intermediaries and regrantors.

A report last year by the alliance estimated that current philanthropic, public and private investments in such methods currently total $44 billion annually. The anticipated cost of a global transition to agroecology and regenerative practices, however, would run as much as $430 billion a year. Meanwhile, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that the hidden costs of current food practices around the globe add up to at least $10 trillion.

“The call to action is really to leverage philanthropy to shift some of those other funding flows,” said Baker, who noted the goal is to grow this segment of philanthropy tenfold, as well. “This next phase of work that we're going to be doing will be centrally focused on that: what are the acceleration levers?”

Many of the same foundations also signed onto a call for food system transformation that was organized by a coalition of 150 groups known (in the language of multilateral meetings) as nonstate actors, including farmers, front-line communities, businesses and cities. The statement urged governments to set targets and transition pathways by the next COP, and get to work on actions within the next two years.

Newly announced funding from Gates, Bezos, Waverley

There have been only a few food funding announcements by philanthropy at COP28 to date, though more may come in the final days of the conference. For instance, another philanthropic sign-on statement, again with many of the same partners, is expected in the coming days and will be paired with a variety of funding announcements.

So far, the largest commitment announced is from one of the world’s largest funders, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which partnered with COP28’s host nation, the United Arab Emirates, on a $200 million commitment for the global agriculture research network, CGIAR, a longtime Gates grantee that is trying to raise $4 billion by 2027.

Another major climate funder run by a tech billionaire, the Bezos Earth Fund, got in on the action, sharing news of $57 million in food and conservation-related grants. The awards are part of a $1 billion commitment to food systems announced by the Amazon founder at the 2021 U.N. climate conference in Glasgow. More than half of the grants will go to efforts to reduce methane emissions from livestock farming and another quarter will help reduce deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.

On a somewhat smaller scale, the Agroecology Fund announced a four-year, $10 million grant — the largest the global intermediary has ever received — from Laurene Powell Jobs’s climate philanthropy, Waverley Street Foundation.

Of course, while some funding happens to overlap with heightened attention of COP28, and some announcements are timed to coincide, there’s a much larger pool of funding going out each year from food and agriculture funders. IKEA Foundation’s strategy and agricultural livelihoods portfolio, for instance, currently has active grants with 38 partners totaling 165 million euros. The foundation has supported the Global Alliance in sponsoring the COP28 attendance of more than 40 front-line food and farming experts, from smallholder farmers to Indigenous activists.

There is, of course, room for plenty more grantmaking. A report published this week, “Reducing Food Loss and Waste: A Roadmap for Philanthropy,” which was funded by Bezos, IKEA Foundation, the Betsy and Jesse Fink Family Foundation and the Robertson Foundation, identified $300 million in ready-to-fund interventions to address food waste, which is a critical source of greenhouse gas emissions, particularly methane.

Like nations, funders are struggling for consensus

The sometimes insurmountable challenge of every COP is getting governments — low-lying islands, petrostates, historic emitters and rising powers — to agree. This year, for instance, countless hours of debate will go into whether an agreement will state that fossil fuels must be phased out — as science makes clear is necessary — or something short of that.

You might think philanthropy, which does not have to answer to voters and has few if any of the economic dependencies warping some countries’ judgments, would easily align on common goals. But on food, it has organized a handful of statements, with similar but not identical goals, and overlapping but not identical signatories.

“It demonstrates that philanthropy is very diverse,” Baker said. “It's really hard to align everybody in philanthropy, I mean, that's a momentous task. And it shows that we have more work to do.”

At the same time, the plethora of statements — and much more importantly, the actions that they promise — are another indicator of philanthropy’s commitment to these issues. For instance, as my colleague Martha Ramirez has reported this year, a number of foundations are putting big bucks behind regenerative agriculture, such as the Rockefeller Foundation.

For people on the front lines, like those represented by Esther Penunia, secretary general of the Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development, the activity and attention is positive. But she would like to see farmers treated as equal partners in the COP process — and a lot more ambition.

“We really need bolder and faster action,” said Penunia, who was one of the leaders sponsored to attend COP28 by the Global Alliance. Alignment, too, is valuable. “We really also must have a common voice and more of a consensus on the methods of achieving a healthy, sustainable food system.”

For the alliance, like other groups that have set big goals, most of the labor is still ahead. A brief report released with their call to action sets a series of next steps, from identifying key partners in the key regions highlighted in their prior research to understanding existing strategies around the globe.

The ultimate aim, which the group says is possible with the desired tenfold increase in investment, is to contribute to ensuring that half of all food is produced using regenerative and agroecological methods by 2040, and all food falls under that description by 2050. Like most climate actions, it is both a seemingly impossible timeline, and the one dictated by science.

“Translating this to action is going to be the real challenge,” Medhin said. “The work ahead is really, really demanding.”

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