The World Wildlife Fund has called for urgent transformation of the global food systems after its flagship report showed a “catastrophic” decline of species over the past 50 years.
The WWF’s Living Planet Report, out on Thursday, revealed global wildlife populations have shrunk by an average of 73% in the past five decades, and that food production was the leading cause for habitat destruction.
The “dysfunction our food system means production uses 40% of the Earth’s habitable land and is the leading cause of habitat loss as biodiverse forests and grasslands are converted to farmland,” the report noted.
Lead author and WWF chief scientific adviser Mike Barrett said human activity – “particularly the way that we produce and consume our food” – was fuelling a decline in natural habitats.
Many important ecosystems including the Amazon and vast areas of coral reef were “on the edge of very dangerous tipping points”, added WWF UK chief Tanya Steele.
The NGO called for co-ordinated action “to scale up nature-friendly production of enough nutritious food for everyone and reducing food loss and waste” as it revealed around 30%-40% of food produced never gets eaten.
The transition to a sustainable food system needed a ”huge increase in spending” to $390bn–$455bn annually from public and private sources, the report argued, adding it was “still less than governments spend each year on environmentally harmful agricultural subsidies”.
WWF’s food systems transformation – call to action
“Even though the food system is the number one driver of environmental degradation, it’s not adequately addressed in major international environmental policy. We need co-ordinated action to:
1. Scale nature-positive production to provide enough food for everyone while also allowing nature to flourish – by optimising crop yields, livestock productivity, wild fisheries harvest and aquaculture production in a sustainable way.
2. Ensure everyone in the world has a nutritious and healthy diet, produced without triggering tipping points – which will involve changing food choices, including eating a greater proportion of plant-based foods and fewer animal products in most developed countries while addressing undernutrition and food security.
3. Reduce food loss and waste – today, an estimated 30%-40% of all food produced is never eaten, representing around a quarter of total global calories, one-fifth of agricultural land and water use, and 4.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
4. Increase financial support and foster good governance for sustainable, resilient, nature-positive food systems – including by redirecting environmentally harmful farming and fishing subsidies to support nature-positive production, reduce food loss and waste, improve consumption and keep food affordable for all.”
Source: WWF’s Living Planet Report 2024
“It is no exaggeration to say that what happens in the next five years will determine the future of life on Earth,” the report warns ahead of the vital COP16 and COP29 summits on biodiversity and climate in Colombia and Azerbaijan this autumn.
By reviewing global progress towards several key 2030 nature and climate goals, the report offers ways forward on the major drivers of the destruction of nature and climate change – the food, finance and energy sectors.
“It’s not too late to change course – this could be a turning point instead of a tipping point,” Steele added.
“As a G7 nation, the UK must take bold action to transform our finance, energy and food systems to protect our world.
“We are calling for a Living Planet Act to ensure the UK government leads the way in tackling this global crisis and works tirelessly to meet the crucial 2030 global targets.”
The report is based on the Living Planet Index of more than 5,000 bird, mammal, amphibian, reptile and fish population counts over the past 50 years.
The organisation’s own sub-division, WWF Markets Institute, has recently unveiled a proposed framework for reducing the most significant environmental impacts of globally traded food, titled Codex Planetarius.
The plan outlines ways in which food production can support growing demand “without sacrificing the natural resources we depend on”.
According to WWF, once in place, Codex Planetarius will: provide a baseline for environmental performance in global production and trade of food and soft commodities; inform regulatory guidelines for governments and global trade that would apply to International trade agreements, eventually to be adopted by entities like the World Trade Organization; provide data to improve supply chain transparency and traceability, allowing retailers and consumers to know exactly where and how their food was produced.
Read more: Can UN food security roadmap feed nine billion people sustainably?
In order to support these goals, WWF is also proposing a “1% Solution”, which would add a 1% environmental service payment to the price of food exports.
The NGO said: “For consumers, a 1% increase in raw material prices would have an insignificant effect on the price of finished goods. But worldwide, the 1% environmental service payment would be enough to address the most significant impacts of producing food.
“For example, in 2022, rough estimates of the 1% Solution funding generated by the export of only five commodities – beef, hides, corn, cotton, and soy – could have been $780m for the US and $550m for Brazil. In actuality, the total would be far greater, supplying new funds for every food-producing country in the world.
Initially, Codex Planetarius will include pilot projects in a handful of selected exporting and importing countries. This work would generate the data necessary for the project to be introduced at scale, WWF said.
The organisation conceded the proposals were “ambitious”.
WWF UK has already built a model adopted by the major British supermarkets that tracks the carbon footprint of a typical shopping basket, setting sustainability goals for companies to halve their carbon emissions by 2030.
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