An assessment of European and international institutions’ contributions to food system transformation.
CIDSE Policy Briefing, September 2020
As prominent public investors, the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the European Union (EU), European countries (EU Member States and others), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have the potential to play a big role in supporting the transformation of our food systems. Unfortunately, our findings show that public money channelled towards agroecology is insufficient in quantity and quality:
- Projects supporting transformative agroecology were only found in the GCF portfolio and represent 10.6% of the money invested in agricultural projects by the GCF.
- Projects partially supporting agroecology represent only 2.7% of the EU funds channelled through FAO, IFAD and WFP projects between 2016 and 2018.
- 79.8% of the EU funds channelled through the FAO, IFAD and WFP and 79.3% of the GCF agricultural money flows are still targeting programmes and projects focusing on conventional agriculture and/or efficiency-oriented approaches (such as sustainable intensification).
- The room for improvement compared to the current situation is huge.
This briefing is based on the research of a background report developed by CIDSE and Nina Moeller at the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR) of Coventry University.