2022 Global Food Policy Report: Foreword

Climate Change & Food Systems

This year’s Global Food Policy Report on food systems transformation and climate change echoes the som- ber warning issued by recent IPCC reports: as we continue to degrade the environment and push beyond our planetary boundaries, we are entering a “Code Red for Humanity.” Food systems are inseparably linked to this unprecedented crisis, which threatens the food security, nutrition, and health of billions of people. Our food sys- tems are not only severely impacted by climate change, requiring an urgent focus on adaption, but also play a role in causing about one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, with two-thirds of that resulting from agriculture, forestry, and other land use. Investing in food systems transformation is a key piece of the climate change puzzle, yet it is vastly underfunded, with only a small part of climate finance directed toward this goal.

In 2021, as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to trigger health and economic crises around the world, the international community came together to recognize the centrality of food systems for meeting development and sustainability goals. The first-ever United Nations Food Systems Summit advanced food systems to the top of the global policy agenda, and the UNFCCC COP26 commenced plans to truly incorporate agriculture into COP27 in 2022. But these developments fall far short of what is urgently needed: a wide range of investments in climate-positive research, development, policies, and programs rooted in food systems.

The 2022 Global Food Policy Report highlights a range of evidence-based policies and innovations that should be prioritized and implemented now to tackle adaptation and mitigation in our food systems. Drawing on research from IFPRI and other CGIAR centers, it offers lessons that can help us better achieve food security, nutrition, and sustainability through climate-positive financing, innovation, and governance.

Going forward, research on transforming food systems to deal with climate change will remain at the heart of the 2030 CGIAR Research and Innovation Strategy. This strategy guides science and innovation initiatives at IFPRI and One CGIAR to advance the transformation of food systems, as well as land and water systems, in a climate crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic as well as the current upheaval of global food markets, caused by a series of conflicts around the world, have made this research strategy even more essential and urgent.

We hope that the 2022 Global Food Policy Report will support transformation by contributing to global policy discussions and to the many national and local policy discussions and reforms that will be essential to food systems transformation. We look forward to engaging and working together with many partners around the world to con- tribute to this transformation and thus to a better future.

Johan Swinnen
Director General, IFPRI
Global Director, Systems Transformation, CGIAR