A World Wildlife Fund report, Bringing It Down To Earth: Nature Risk & Agriculture, has highlighted how unsustainable food production practices are putting our food and financial systems at risk, and how both people and the planet would benefit from a more sustainable approach.
The report warns that farming has “become an activity [that] extracts resources and slowly erodes the very same natural resource base that it needs to sustain itself.” Agriculture is the “biggest contributor to nature loss” while “food systems are responsible for up to 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions,” the report adds.
Bringing it Down to Earth offers tools and guidance to help investors and lenders keen to better understand the impacts of agribusiness, mitigate and manage its risks and impacts, and create opportunities. Biodiversity loss is a source of financial risk, the report warns, but “Current risk assessment methodologies fail to capture many of the hidden costs of investments or subsidies in the food systems, leaving the financial sector exposed.”