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agroecology
Climate Negotiators Will Talk About Anything But Finance and Decarbonization
While Bonn has spent considerable time debating indicators, methodologies, and reporting frameworks, developing countries continue to raise concerns about access to finance and the means needed to turn plans into action.
Jun 18, 2026
The climate negotiations are beginning to feel like a masterclass in avoiding the obvious. Every year, negotiators arrive with new targets, new initiatives, and new buzzwords.
This year, one of the biggest announcements revolves around electrification. The incoming COP31 Presidencies have put forward a target to move from 20% to 35% electrification by 2035. At first glance, it sounds ambitious. Yet the key question is what will power that electrification.
An electric vehicle connected to a fossil fuel-powered grid does not necessarily deliver meaningful emissions reductions. Likewise, an electric factory running on gas-generated electricity cannot be considered evidence of a low-carbon transition. Electrification delivers climate benefits only when it is powered by renewable energy and accompanied by a clear road map to phase out fossil fuels.
Yet a fundamental contradiction persists. While governments celebrate record growth in renewable energy, they continue approving new oil, gas, and coal projects. Renewable energy capacity is increasing, but fossil fuel production is increasing too. Nearly 30 years after the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, negotiators are still struggling to confront the primary driver of climate change.
While developed countries point to existing contributions as evidence of progress, developing countries remain confronted with a widening gap between what is needed and what is being delivered.
The same tendency to search for new distractions is emerging in the agriculture discussions. Instead of prioritizing agroecology, which already provides proven solutions for adaptation, food security, biodiversity protection, and resilience, increasing attention is being given to artificial intelligence. While technology certainly has a role to play, farmers facing droughts, floods, soil degradation, and declining yields are not asking for algorithms. They are asking for secure access to land, water, seeds, finance, and support.
The adaptation discussions reveal a similar disconnect. While Bonn has spent considerable time debating indicators, methodologies, and reporting frameworks, developing countries continue to raise concerns about access to finance and the means needed to turn plans into action. Discussions under the Baku Adaptation Roadmap exposed broad agreement that major barriers continue to prevent finance from reaching countries and communities at the scale required. Yet when the conversation turned to solutions, momentum quickly faded. The same pattern resurfaced during discussions on the Global Goal on Adaptation, where developed countries showed far greater interest in technical discussions than in finance and implementation. Meanwhile, communities on the ground are left waiting for support that remains trapped in negotiation rooms.
And when adaptation falls short, those impacts do not simply disappear. They become loss and damage. Yet despite being recognized as the third pillar of climate action, loss and damage continues to be treated as an afterthought. During the opening plenaries in Bonn, Ghana, speaking on behalf of the Africa Group of Negotiators, and Timor-Leste, speaking on behalf of the Least Developed Countries, highlighted a striking contradiction: While countries repeatedly call for balance across climate action, there is still no comprehensive agenda item dedicated to loss and damage under the negotiations.
This diplomatic stalling now clashes directly with international law. In its landmark Climate Change Advisory Opinion, the International Court of Justice affirmed that states have a legal obligation to protect the climate system and cooperate to address climate harm. By clarifying that breaches of climate obligations may constitute internationally wrongful acts, the court strengthened the legal basis for responsibility, restitution, and compensation.
At the center of all these discussions lies a familiar issue: finance. The mitigation and adaptation ambitions embedded in the Paris Agreement were always contingent on the provision of climate finance under Article 9.1. Every ambition discussed in Bonn, from adaptation and resilience to renewable energy and implementation, ultimately depends on whether developing countries receive adequate support.
That tension is playing out directly in Bonn's finance negotiations. The two major finance discussions this year, the Climate Finance Work Programme and the Veredas Dialogue on Article 2.1(c), exposed a persistent divide. Developing countries continue to stress that climate finance is a legal obligation and the foundation for implementing climate action. Developed countries, meanwhile, continue pushing broader discussions centered on mobilizing finance from multiple sources, particularly private finance.
Ultimately, both processes highlighted the same reality: While developed countries point to existing contributions as evidence of progress, developing countries remain confronted with a widening gap between what is needed and what is being delivered.
Against this backdrop, the establishment of the Just Transition Mechanism at COP30 stands out as one of the few discussions focused on implementation rather than process. After years of dialogue under the UAE Just Transition Work Programme, Parties recognized the need for a dedicated mechanism capable of connecting ambition with delivery. Discussions in Bonn are now turning to how it can support countries navigating profound economic and social transformation.
For developing countries, this discussion goes far beyond climate policy. Energy access, industrialization, economic diversification, poverty eradication, and job creation are central to the transition many countries are trying to build. Whether the mechanism becomes a meaningful tool for support or simply another addition to the climate architecture will depend on the choices parties make in the months ahead. Without that shift from process to implementation, every year spent debating distractions is another year spent delaying the action we already know is needed.
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Could High Fertilizer Prices Change the Face of Farming?
The development of agroecological and regenerative approaches would see a food system that is not only less vulnerable to the supply chain shocks being felt today, but would be better for the environment, human health, and animals.
May 17, 2026
The global disruptions caused by the war in Iran have brought renewed focus to the vulnerability of global fossil fuel supply chains. But what has received less attention is how the war also highlights the vulnerability of industrial agriculture supply chains reliant on massive amounts of chemical fertilizers and other inputs. Like oil and gas, these frequently travel long distances through turbulent waters.
A big advantage of renewable energy technologies like solar is that sunlight doesn’t have to pass through the Straits of Hormuz. The same can be said for many of the inputs required for agroecological and regenerative farming systems. The development of these approaches would see a food system that is not only less vulnerable to the supply chain shocks being felt today, but would be better for the environment, human health, and animals. It would be healthier, kinder, and more resilient.
A global economic recession and possible food shortages are looming as the war in Iran grinds on. While the devastating impact of the current conflict on people, their families, and communities must be foremost in our minds, the shock waves from the crisis are having system-wide impacts on energy supplies, cost of living, and food prices. As the seasons turn and farmers prepare to plant their crops, they are facing a new pressure: a sudden and critical rise in fertilizer and fuel costs.
As the price of petrol and diesel have skyrocketed since the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, so too have fertilizer costs due to shortages of urea and ammonia. A third of the world's key fertilizer chemicals pass through the Strait, and prices have risen steeply since the outbreak of war, with predictions that prices for nitrogen-based fertilizers like urea could roughly double if the war drags on. Alongside a rise in red diesel prices, agricultural profit margins are highly volatile.
The current war is heinous, but inadvertently it has created an inflexion point, a moment to rethink global distribution of goods, and our broken food system.
Farmers taking the financial hit will likely pass on the costs to the consumer, but this isn’t sustainable and undermines the financial, social, and environmental health of the global food system. What if we flip it? Could the Middle East War not only accelerate a shift to renewable energy but also reduce our dependency on fertilizer-hungry crops? Legumes such as beans and peas, which fix nitrogen in soils, root vegetables, soybeans, and hardy grains such as rye could be viable alternatives.
Since the Second World War, a burgeoning (and hugely profitable for a few) chemical industry has created food systems dependent on inputs such as fossil fuel-based fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides. While delivering greater crop surplus, industrial farming has brought new problems: algal blooms, less wildlife and pollinators, monocultures, local air pollution, global climate change, and the loss of small-scale farming and farmers.
We’ve reached a tipping point; we overproduce food, a third of which is wasted, and too many people are eating too much of the wrong types of food. Noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes are becoming a much bigger health burden than infectious diseases. Meanwhile, entrenched inequalities mean that, despite a global food surplus, millions of people go hungry every day, and 2.6 billion people can’t afford a healthy diet. An insatiable demand for meat now means that there are over 76 billion farmed chicken, pigs, and cattle in production around the planet, driving a largely invisible burden of animal suffering.
The current war is heinous, but inadvertently it has created an inflexion point, a moment to rethink global distribution of goods, and our broken food system. Growing crops that don’t need so many fossil fuel-derived chemicals but still provide enough food to feed our populations, and sustainable farming for current and future generations, is where we should be heading. We need to transition away from industrial agriculture, to food systems built on fairness—to people, animals, and the planet—not one geared toward feeding animals to feed ourselves. It’s a stark reality that over one-third of land used to grow arable crops is used to grow crops for animal feed.
Animal farming industry groups have been calling for public money to weather supply shocks, which begs the question of how resilient are the industrial systems we currently rely on. The US government provided $1 billion in response to avian flu, for example, while the European Union directed €46.7 million to Italian farmers, plus another €15 million for weather and animal-disease-related impacts in parts of Europe, and Canada extended livestock tax relief linked to bovine TB and extreme weather. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is also calling for urgent action in the form of government funds to protect the countries heavily exposed to import disruptions.
It’s clear that the current industrial animal farming model is not resilient. It depends heavily on unstable supply chains exposed to geopolitical shocks, climate change, extreme weather events, and disease outbreaks, and is a deeply inefficient use of plant resources to feed the world. Yet public money keeps being used to stabilize food systems that are structurally fragile, rather than directed toward sustainable and humane agriculture.
The current crisis in the Middle East has once again spotlighted our dependence on fossil fuels for energy and for food production. The growing success of renewable energy technologies—wind, solar, electric vehicles, and heat pumps—provides a roadmap to achieving energy independence at local and national levels. This has been achieved through several decades of policy and fiscal support, such as feed-in tariffs, technological advances, and growing public support.
Changing how we produce food could advance rapidly on the coat tails of our energy revolution. Calls for a just transition in farming and food production are growing from independent, small-scale farmers to development organizations, from Indigenous people’s groups to animal welfare charities. This transition would pivot away from destructive, insecure industrial agriculture toward more equitable, humane, and sustainable forms of agriculture, such as agroecology.
Rethinking food is not a nice to have, it’s essential if we are to strengthen the resilience of farmers, consumers, and nations, reducing exposure to geopolitical tensions, supply-chain disruptions, and future global shocks.
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Our Global Food System Is on the Brink of Collapse
The impact on fuel prices due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is the canary in the agrifood coal mine.
Apr 17, 2026
What does Big Ag have to do with the Strait of Hormuz? A lot, actually, when you consider that almost every so-called efficiency that industrial agriculture relies on to operate flows through this waterway. And now it is closed, threatening global food security.
And what is the primary source of the problem? Our reliance on fossil fuels.
What do fertilizers, pesticides, and plastics have in common?
First of all, each is a leg of the stool that makes up the rickety foundation of our global agrifood system.
Plastics are involved in every stage of our food and farming systems from soil to spoon: plastic polymers are used in some mulches, agrichemical containers are generally made of plastics, harvest crates and produce packages are often plastic, most processed foods are packaged in plastic or plastic-lined containers, and single-use plastics are still widely used in plates, bowls, cups, straws, napkins, and utensils.
In the 1960s, the world used between 60 and 70 million tonnes of fertilizer (synthetic nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus, plus organic nitrogen) per year. But that usage has steadily risen ever since: in 2023 we used nearly 183 million tonnes of fertilizer. This rise can be attributed in part to the rising needs of a growing global population, but it is more indicative of our over-reliance on fertilizers as a way to combat the increasing effects of climate change. This season, farmers are already reporting untenable increases in fertilizer prices.
Big Ag has and will continue to rely on Big Oil to make Big Money as long as they can, but the United States’ and Israel’s unconstitutional war on Iran starkly illustrates just how fragile this house of cards is.
Pesticides are the other side of the agrichemical input coin. Fertilizers and pesticides go hand-in-hand, when it comes to global agrifood systems. The foundation of industrialized farming is monocropping (growing a single crop over and over on the same piece of land). The problem with monocropping is that it is extremely input intensive because monocropped land is more vulnerable to pest and disease pressure. And over time, this vulnerability increases, requiring more and more pesticides as tolerance builds. This creates a vicious cycle called the Pesticide Treadmill that is hard for farmers to escape without support.
But, critically, synthetic plastics, fertilizers, and pesticides are all derivatives of fossil fuels, mass quantities of which must be funneled through one waterway before becoming various inputs and components of our centralized, industrialized agrifood system. Rather than curbing our use of climate-harming fossil fuel-derived plastics, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides, our agrifood systems use more and more each year, exacerbating the problem and further locking us into a fragile food system.
A Strait Chokepoint
According to the Congressional Research Service, over a quarter of the world’s supply of oil comes through the Strait of Hormuz, impacting farmers’ ability to get seeds in the ground and food to tables. Additionally, 20% of natural gas transits the Strait, which is a component of many agrichemical inputs. But, byproducts of oil and gas production also pass through the Strait, including helium which is used in semiconductor manufacturing (semiconductors like silicon are necessary for all modern technology), and urea, which is one of the most commonly used synthetic fertilizers. Over a third of the world’s urea must pass through the Strait.
In short, global agrifood systems rely intrinsically on fossil fuels and their byproducts to function, and when supply lines are disrupted, even briefly, the domino effects could be catastrophic. This article is not meant to be a metaphor, but an urgent warning and a window to our way out.
The most important—and maddening—thing to know is that our agrifood systems need not rely so heavily on fossil fuels and their byproducts to feed the world’s people.
Big Ag has and will continue to rely on Big Oil to make Big Money as long as they can, but the United States’ and Israel’s unconstitutional war on Iran starkly illustrates just how fragile this house of cards is. As countries around the world issue energy conservation mandates and brace for worsening inflation and supply chain instability, we should consider how agroecological farming practices could not only make our agrifood systems safer by reducing exposures of harmful pesticides and curb climate change, but also make the systems that feed us more resilient by decentralizing them, improving resilience to climate change-induced drought, floods, and pest pressures, and extricating them out from under the thumb of fossil fuel corporations.
Corporate greed has optimized humanity to the brink of mass starvation. But the principles of agroecology center food sovereignty (the opposite of corporate control), labor justice, and land stewardship.
Food systems grounded in agroecology are ones in which:
- All people have access to healthy, safe, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food.
- Farmers and agricultural workers work with the land to protect, restore, and sustain natural resources and ecosystems.
- Agriculture utilizes ecological management practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improving adaptation and resilience to climate change.
- Synthetic chemical inputs are reduced or eliminated whenever possible.
- The production, sharing, commerce, and consumption of food is built on an economy which prioritizes thriving communities, resilient local markets, and worker rights.
- Diverse cultures, identities, and knowledge systems are embraced along with equitable forms of social organization.
- Power in food and farming systems is redistributed; shifting away from transnational corporations so that the rights of food producers, farm workers, and agricultural communities are centered.
These principles are not far fetched; they’re economically viable solutions that are being practiced successfully around the world already. Systemic shifts toward global agrifood systems that prioritize the principles of agroecology could help us to solve the triple planetary crises of pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate change.
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How Public Finance for Agriculture Can Improve Food Security, Health, and Climate
By supporting agroecology, multilateral development banks can stop fueling harm and start financing a just and sustainable food systems transition.
Dec 03, 2025
Agriculture is essential to human life. How we feed ourselves matters for nutrition, health, climate, biodiversity, and livelihoods. Nearly 928 million people are employed in farming globally, and food systems are responsible for one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions and most new deforestation.
Multilateral development banks (MDBs), like the World Bank Group (WBG), play a critical role. The WBG has committed to double its agricultural financing to $9 billion a year by 2030. In October it launched AgriConnect, an initiative seeking to transform small-scale farming into an engine of sustainable growth, jobs, and food security.
However, while some MDB investments support equitable and sustainable transformation, too many still fuel environmental destruction and inequity. The World Bank’s private sector arm, IFC, recently invested $47 million in a multi-story pig factory farm in China, for example.
A new report from the University of Vermont Institute for Agroecology analyses MDB agricultural investments and sets out a road map for how banks can support, rather than hinder, sustainable farming. The research finds that the World Bank and other public-sector lenders can drive systemic change by supporting governments with policy reforms, rural extension services, and enabling environments. For example, a $70 million Inter-American Development Bank project in Paraíba, Brazil is promoting inclusive, low-carbon agriculture, and strengthening family farmers and traditional communities through technical assistance and climate-resilient infrastructure.
MDBs’ private sector operations must reform their lending criteria and stop financing destructive projects.
MDBs are better placed than other financial institutions to take long-term, lower-return investments aligned with climate and food security goals. Agroecological farming, a holistic, community-based approach to food systems that applies ecological and social food sovereignty concepts, along with long-term productivity, provides a channel for public sector arms of MDBs to support needed agricultural transformation. MDBs and other public banks therefore, should seek to become the enablers of agroecology. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) are already leading efforts in this direction.
MDB Private Sector Operations: Profit-Driven Harms
In contrast to the IFAD and AFD models, the University of Vermont's Institute for Agroecology’s report found that the majority of private-focused MDBs prioritize “bankable” projects—typically large-scale, industrial, profit-driven agribusiness. This model steers money toward factory farms that use human-edible food as feed, pollute nearby communities, raise the risks of zoonotic disease and antimicrobial resistance, and engage in animal cruelty. In 2023, a report by Stop Financing Factory Farming found that public finance institutions invested US$2.27 billion in factory farming, 68% of the total investment in animal agriculture projects that year.
As evidenced by multiple complaints from impacted communities, these investments undermine poverty reduction, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and Paris Agreement climate goals. MDBs’ private sector operations must reform their lending criteria and stop financing destructive projects.
The opportunity: Public Sector Banks Can Pave the Way for Private-Sector Transformation
Rich country governments currently subsidize agriculture, mostly industrial, at a level of $842 billion per year. According to the IMF, only a quarter is dedicated to support for public goods in the sector. Shifting this support to incentivize investments in agroecology is crucial to sustain the agricultural transformation that public banks themselves have called for.
Public banks have the opportunity to join a growing number of organisations already advancing an ecological approach to meet the SDGs and wider social, cultural, and economic, and environmental objectives. To do so, they must shift from treating agroecology as merely a niche solution and instead invest in it as a priority means for achieving food systems transformation.
Agroecology puts an end to costly and harmful practices, replacing animal cruelty with humane, safe, and fair standards.
By taking this approach, public banks can better support just transitions in food systems, something that is already beginning to take shape. Earlier this year, for example, the World Bank backed an $800 million loan to the Colombian government to advance a greener and more resilient economic transformation.
The private-sector arms of MDBs, such as IFC and IDB Invest, also have a role to play in aligning with the transition. Most importantly, they can support governments with policy advice and financing criteria that break from entrenched models and exclude industrial animal agriculture from eligibility for finance.
While MDBs have taken steps to make agricultural production and rural incomes less vulnerable to climate change, they have yet to commit to agroecological farming as the most effective pathway. In contrast, IFAD is already demonstrating what this can look like, driving agroecological transitions through private-sector incentives in Ethiopia, Peru, and Vietnam. Similarly, AFD is applying agroecology to support family farming in Ethiopia, Haiti, Madagascar, Malawi, and Sierra Leone.
Agroecology as the Future of Sustainable Farming—and Public Agricultural Finance?
If MDBs are looking to advance the SDGs and solve the polycrisis (climate, biodiversity, pandemic risk, and food security), one of the most effective ways in which this can be done is for the public sector to mobilize policy support and significant capital investment into agroecology. Meanwhile, MDB private sector arms can enable this transition by providing policy advice and finance for interventions that break from entrenched models.
Agroecology puts an end to costly and harmful practices, replacing animal cruelty with humane, safe, and fair standards. But it's not just about farming practices. It also helps transform food systems, building resilient, reparative, low-emission economies and improves livelihoods in line with the 2030 SDGs.
By supporting agroecology, MDBs can stop fueling harm and start financing a just and sustainable food systems transition. If they are serious about the SDGs, food security, and climate goals, the road map is clear—MDBs’ public sector operations must enable, their private sector operations must reform, and both must support a transition away from industrial agriculture toward a more just and sustainable food system.
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At COP30, I’ll Speak for the Bees
The plight of Peru's native bees shines a light on the interconnecting challenges in food production and nature, deforestation, monoculture, and agrochemicals.
Nov 17, 2025
When I travel to Belém for COP30, I won’t be following the intricacies of climate negotiations or tracking the high-level plenaries. I’m going to use my time there to talk about native bees. And how paying attention to them opens up a world of interconnections between our food, climate, and biodiversity, and why agrochemicals are at the heart of their decline.
I'm a Quechua-speaking descendant of InKawasi, a community in the northern Andes of Lambayeque, Peru. I am a chemical engineer, ecopreneur, keeper of native bees, and environmental activist, and over my lifetime, I’ve seen my mountain ecosystem collapse, and with it our native bees.
Bees are far more than cute and charismatic; they are keystone species, pivotal in food production and ecology, especially as three-quarters of the world’s crops depend on pollinators like bees. When bees suffer, so do we. This sums up the importance of the Quechua saying, "Sumak Kawsay," which means "a plentiful life, in harmony with nature," and that’s why I’ve named my honey enterprise after it.
Where I live, our native bees are stingless and produce much smaller quantities of honey, which has been long used and valued by Indigenous communities for its medicinal properties.
As much as we need local, bottom-up initiatives, our governments and decision-makers must implement policies to address the negative impact of agrochemicals and their contribution to the climate crisis, loss of species and biodiversity, and adverse health effects.
This honey has been a powerful force in my own life. When I felt I had lost my path after studying engineering, an Indigenous healer fed me a spoonful of stingless bee honey at a ceremony. It was in that moment that I knew I had to work on restoring these bees and my mountain. I soon learned the fate of both is intrinsically connected.
Unlike the honeybees that came from Europe, these are especially adapted to pollinate endemic trees, plants, and crops. Without them, the extinction of our native species hangs in the balance—and farmers’ crops suffer.
But farming itself is driving their drastic decline: Forests have been cut down to make way for coffee, cassava, corn, and sugar monocultures—toppling the ancient, hollow grandfather trees in which they make their hives. Where there are fewer trees, there is less water, and my mountain has become desolate. As natural biodiversity that regulates pests disappears, farmers began to use pesticides to kill weeds and increase yields, damaging insect and plant life even more, including our native bees.
Research by the Center for Biological Diversity found that 40% of global pollinators are highly threatened due to intensive farming and pesticide use. In Latin America, 25% fewer bee species were reported in 2015 compared with 1990. This is a vicious cycle happening all over the world, especially in the Amazon, where COP30 is taking place.
Seven years since my realization, my enterprise works to protect native bees, restore their habitats, protect forests, and empower women. We’ve set up a honey social enterprise and pollination school, the "Women Guardians of the Native Bees" program, launched this year to empower 60 Quechua and peasant women through stingless beekeeping, encouraging local farmers and women to protect bees, collect their honey, and recognize the crucial role of pollinators in food production and nature restoration. The focus on bees is about much more than just the honey; it’s a gateway to a wider understanding of the natural world and the cycle of restoration, renewal, and preservation.
I run workshops with local farmers and communities to raise awareness about the dangers of pesticides and encourage learning of agroecological approaches to tackle pests instead of toxic chemicals. This is ancestral knowledge; our parents and grandparents have it, but we’ve lost it with the introduction of industrially produced agrochemicals. Instead, it’s about observing nature and re-instilling a curiosity about how beings interact—what pesticides do to habitats and ecology, and how introducing native species can have domino effects.
We teach them how to create habitats and nests for bees and how to collect their honey, treasured for its lower sugar content and medicinal properties. This bit is crucial. We buy their honey at a fair price if they commit to agroecological practices. These producers and farms now form the "La Ruta de la Miel de Abeja" (The Bee Honey Route) that we’ve built with local women who take tourists to connect with bees, nature, and communities.
The snowball effect is immense; it encourages farmers to stop using pesticides and restore the habitat for bees, generates income for women, and funds our mountain restoration. We have now planted more than 2,000 native trees and are preserving three species of stingless bees. We have a long way to go, but it is the rebirth of our mountain ecosystem.
It also proves that Sumak Kawsay—living in harmony with nature—is possible.
So when I am at COP30 in Belém, this is the message I will carry. I’ll do what I know best: use bees as a way to shine a light on the interconnecting challenges in food production and nature, deforestation, monoculture, and agrochemicals. We have Indigenous solutions available, like our pollination schools and honey cooperatives, but we need more resources to scale them up and empower farmers.
But as much as we need local, bottom-up initiatives, our governments and decision-makers must implement policies to address the negative impact of agrochemicals and their contribution to the climate crisis, loss of species and biodiversity, and adverse health effects. We need resources and support for food producers, farm workers, and communities to break the stranglehold of agrochemicals and shift to agroecology. It must be a Just Transition that provides us with the social and economic mechanisms to adapt to this change.
While I am at COP30, I will say enough is enough. We need to phase out toxic agrochemicals and restore the balance between people, food, climate, and nature.
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Why Climate Action Must Start on Our Plates
Rebalancing industrial animal farming cuts emissions, limits disease risk, protects biodiversity, and strengthens food security, reminding us that human, animal, and planetary well-being are inseparable.
Nov 10, 2025
Every year, world leaders gather to tackle the climate crisis. They promise to cut emissions, restore forests, and invest in a greener future. Yet one of the most powerful tools for change often goes unmentioned: the food on our plates.
After more than a decade of working in, and with, the United Nations, I’ve learned something crucial: Food sits at the center of everything we are trying to protect—our climate, biodiversity, health, and livelihoods. This year, for the first time, food systems are formally part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties (UNFCCC COP30) Action Agenda—a long-overdue recognition of their central role in solving the climate crisis. Still, too often, they remain the missing piece in global climate discussions.
The science is clear. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that food systems—from how we grow and process food to how we transport and waste it—account for about a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The message is simple: We cannot fix the climate crisis while ignoring what we eat.
A Hopeful Solution Within Reach
This reality should give us hope. Food offers a solution that is immediate, inclusive, and within reach. Every meal is a chance to make things better.
Plant-rich eating is not a trend or a restriction. It is a climate solution, backed by science and rooted in fairness. Research in Nature shows plant-rich diets produce 75% less climate-heating emissions compared with high-meat diets, while using 75% less land and 54% less water. By eating this way, we can cut global food emissions by nearly one-third, improve public health, and ease the pressure on forests and ecosystems.
As negotiations unfold in Belém, COP30 offers a historic opportunity to embed food systems into the heart of climate policy.
But consumption is only part of the picture. World leaders must change how food is produced. Industrial farming, which relies heavily on deforestation and feed crop production, drives much of the problem. At COP30, hosted in Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has pledged bold action to protect forests, including a $1 billion commitment to the Tropical Forests Forever Fund. Reducing the expansion of soy and maize for feed—a major driver of deforestation—is essential not only for reducing emissions, but also for helping communities adapt, especially in vulnerable regions.
At Compassion in World Farming, we see this every day in our work with farmers, policymakers, and communities. Agroecological and regenerative practices, such as crop rotation, help restore soils and reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers. They also align with traditional and Indigenous knowledge that works with nature rather than against it.
Why This Matters to Me
As a father of a Gen Alpha child, I think about what kind of planet my daughter will inherit. We eat three times a day, every day, and we will do it for the rest of our lives. Our choices shape whether her world is sustainable or fragile.
I have been part of countless UN meetings and summits on climate, food systems, and sustainable development. In the past year, I have witnessed growing momentum across the UN system to integrate food into climate discussions, especially following the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) and the COP28 Declaration on Food and Agriculture’s recommendations. This shift is encouraging and signals the world is ready to treat food systems as central to climate action.
When I look at my daughter’s future, I want to believe that we will have the courage to connect these dots: to see that what we grow and eat is not just personal preference but global policy.
What Leaders Must Do
At COP30 in Belém, governments have a chance to change course. To do so, they must:
- Integrate food into climate plans. Countries’ climate pledges, known as Nationally Determined Contributions, should include agriculture, livestock, strategies to eat more sustainably, and reducing food waste. They must move away from industrial farming and feed crop expansion toward regenerative agricultural practices that cut emissions and build resilience.
- Make plant-rich diets a climate priority. This is not about telling people what to eat but enabling sustainable, lower-emission choices that realistically align with the planet’s ecological boundaries. In practical terms, the recently launched EAT-Lancet 2.0 report, supported by leading scientists and policymakers, offers a clear and actionable framework for countries to adopt healthier, climate-friendly diets.
- Support farmers through a just transition. Those least responsible for climate change, who tend to be the most vulnerable populations, must be supported with finance, capacity building, and fair access to markets.
These shifts must fit local realities. In the Global South, diets, cultural traditions, and nutritional needs vary widely. Supporting plant-rich diets must go hand in hand with respecting local contexts and ensuring food sovereignty.
A New Kind of Climate Leadership
Reframing food as climate action must include the recognition that human, animal, and planetary health are deeply connected and dependent. Rebalancing industrial animal farming cuts emissions, limits disease risk, protects biodiversity, and strengthens food security, reminding us that human, animal, and planetary well-being are inseparable.
As negotiations unfold in Belém, COP30 offers a historic opportunity to embed food systems into the heart of climate policy—not just as a mitigation tool, but as a pathway for adaptation, resilience, and equity. Global action on food must reflect its true potential: to drive down emissions, regenerate ecosystems, and chart a more sustainable future for everyone.
This is the climate leadership we need: bold, inclusive, and rooted in the principle that climate action begins with what we eat.
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The MAHA Commission Won’t Fix Public Health or Our Food System
RFK Jr. sold out on pesticides, but we can course correct if as a society we reprioritize health and start making decisions that benefit people over corporate greed.
Oct 19, 2025
When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. started talking about pesticides, a lot of people got their hopes up that someone might finally fix the broken food system. But instead he bowed to corporate oligarchy when he listened to Big Ag rather than recommending that we stop exposing ourselves to toxic pesticides. This toxic food system wasn’t always our reality, and it doesn’t have to be our future.
In the United States, it is the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) job to regulate pesticides. Pesticide manufacturers apply for registration of active ingredients by submitting research (often industry funded) claiming they are safe and effective when used as directed. EPA determines its registration decisions based on a risk assessment and other supporting documents, then a public comment period follows. However, EPA relies on industry-funded research for these decisions, when time and again we have seen the pesticide industry hide evidence that its products cause harm.
Take the herbicide paraquat for instance: Paraquat is a highly toxic pesticide; one teaspoon is enough to kill an adult. There is no antidote for paraquat poisoning. This herbicide is commonly used in the United States as weeds become increasingly resistant to glyphosate (the active ingredient in Bayer’s industrial formulation of Roundup™). Paraquat is banned for use in 72 countries. Exposure to paraquat has been increasingly associated with Parkinson’s disease and other chronic conditions like cancer, but Big Ag has successfully pushed back against calls to ban this pesticide in the US for decades.
But this issue is bigger than one chemical; there are hundreds of pesticides in use in this country, and all of them have the potential to cause harm. Be it weeds, bugs, rodents, or fungi, the purpose of these chemicals is to kill what they come in contact with. Our consolidated food system encourages farmers to prioritize quantity over crop diversity—meaning that the largest farms in this country are monoculture operations (farms growing one crop on massive swaths of land). One problem with monoculture is that the pest pressures are significant. It requires high inputs of agrichemicals; you either need a huge amount of labor to pull weeds and hand-pick pests, or you apply increasing quantities of synthetic pesticides to manage pests. Year over year, as farms use more and more pesticides, weeds and pests develop resistance, requiring more frequent application or resorting to stronger, more toxic formulations. This is a vicious cycle that traps farmers by keeping them on a “pesticide treadmill.”
Agorecology is an economically and ecologically viable alternative to our current food system’s foundation of extraction.
This monoculture, ultra-processed food system that relies heavily on toxic chemicals is also making us sick, with microplastics being found in our brains (plastic usage in agriculture is also a growing concern and a major contributor to microplastics in soil); PFAS contaminating our water (many pesticide formulations contain or are themselves PFAS); and children being exposed to pesticides in their backyards, at parks and schools, and in utero. At the same time, farmers are being squeezed by a system that makes it harder for small and medium-sized farms to make a living, with no protections in place except for the corporate players.
It wasn’t one thing that set us on the path to this reality where our food, water, soil, air, and bodies are contaminated with fossil fuel derived agrichemicals and microplastics; there were decisions and policies that over the course of only a few decades cornered us into this reality. The good news is that we can course correct if as a society we reprioritize health and start making decisions that benefit people over corporate greed.
A food system built on agroecology is one that doesn’t rely on agrichemicals to function and is therefore not captured by corporations. An agroecological food system in America looks like thriving and decentralized community food systems, where the people growing and consuming food have control over what goes into and comes out of their food system; grow food without reliance on agrichemical inputs or patented seeds; work with the environment rather than against it; and prioritize health, safety, and collective well-being.
Agorecology is an economically and ecologically viable alternative to our current food system’s foundation of extraction. It is actively practiced around the world, and it existed in what we now call the United States of America long before pesticides were introduced. Our job today is to shift our extractive mindsets to ones that prioritize health, in line with Indigenous wisdom.
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To Meet the Sustainable Development Goals, Prioritize Animal Welfare
As UN member states gather in New York to discuss progress on global challenges, it is vital that we bring animals back into the fold.
Sep 22, 2025
This month sees United Nations member states gather at the 80th United Nations General Assembly in New York to debate the most important global issues.
Ten years ago, the assembly agreed on a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure peace and prosperity for all by 2030.
One key accelerator that has been continuously overlooked in the SDGs is animal welfare. Nowhere is this more evident than in how we treat farmed animals and manage our food systems. Industrial systems, where the majority of the around 85 billion land animals farmed for food each year are raised, drive climate change, hunger, pollution, and inequality. Yet, higher-welfare, sustainable practices show how respecting animals can help deliver progress across the SDGs. Unless we take animal welfare seriously, we’ll fall short of achieving sustainability. The systems in which we farm animals are an illustration of this.
At the United Nations Environment Assembly in 2022, member states explicitly acknowledged that “animal welfare can contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.” So the mandate is there, but what does this actually mean in practice when it comes to specific goals? How does improving animal welfare drive progress on sustainable development, better people’s lives, and support the environment around us?
Farm Animal Welfare and Climate Change
One of the biggest threats we face is addressed in SDG 13: "Combating Climate Change," a significant contributor to which is the industrial exploitation of animals for food. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that animal agriculture contributes 14.5% of human-caused emissions.
Higher animal welfare farming systems offer solutions. Agroecological approaches where animals are integrated into local environments that can provide them with food (i.e. grass), and manage their waste in sustainable, regenerative ways, have greater capacities for carbon sequestration potential compared with industrial animal farming. They are also more resilient to climate change and disasters, thereby supporting mitigation and adaptation.
Without changing our relationship with animals, we have no hope of reaching these ambitious SDGs.
We need to introduce policy solutions that enhance such sustainable agriculture practices, alongside those encouraging the reduction of overconsumption of animal-sourced foods.
Our Global Food System Fuels Food Insecurity
Another victim of our intensive animal agricultural system is global food security. There is a misconception that we need to upscale production of animal-sourced foods to feed a growing global population. But this is a fallacy. Evidence from recent decades shows that increased production serves overconsumption. In fact, SDG 2: "Zero Hunger" is out of reach if we continue to squander such vast quantities of human-edible resources on inhumanely farmed animals. A recent study found that fewer than half the calories grown on farms now reach our plates—calories that could be eaten directly by humans. With the World Health Organization (WHO) citing that around 733 million people faced hunger in 2023, feeding crops to humans, instead of animals, should be prioritized if we are serious about achieving food security.
Animal and Human Health and Well-Being Are Intrinsically Connected
Our exploitation of animals is also a source of air, soil, and water pollution in many regions, addressed in SDG 6: "Clean Water and Sanitation." Overreliance on fertilizers and pesticides in industrial agriculture systems can cause soil and water pollution. Furthermore, air pollutants such as faecal dust, ammonia, and hydrogen sulphide are consequences of intensive systems, all posing human health risks. This comes in contradiction to SDG 3: "Ensure Healthy Lives and Promote Well-Being for All at All Ages."
There are other health impacts to the way we treat animals. Antimicrobial resistance in humans has been named by the WHO as one of the top global public health and development threats, accelerated by the routine use of antimicrobials in intensive animal farming to offset the risks of concentrating excessive numbers in crowded conditions, or to speed up growth for greater profit.
Animal Exploitation Is Linked to Biodiversity Loss and Nature Depletion
SDG 15 aims to protect life on land, yet globally monitored population sizes of mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, and amphibians have declined an average of 68% between 1970 and 2016. These drastic reductions reveal a broken relationship between humans and the natural world, and show that far too little action has been taken to date.
Agriculture uses half of the world’s habitable land, with animal farming accounting for 77% of globally available farming land. Land-use change, primarily related to animal agriculture, is a huge contributor to biodiversity loss. To prevent the alarming loss of wildlife, habitat destruction, and pollution, we need to protect animals who play critical roles as pollinators, nutrient recyclers, and environmental custodians. We need bees for our food system, forest-dwelling elephants for carbon storage, and beavers building dams to restore wetlands, to name a few examples.
Our Global Food System Exacerbates Poverty and Inequality
Ultimately, a key driver of the SDGs is the ambitious first goal—to end poverty. But by exploiting animals for food, we are heightening it. The overindustrialization of animal agriculture is lining the pockets of a few global giants, while small-scale farmers are being pushed out. Higher-welfare farming systems can have positive impacts on the livelihoods of smallholders, for many of whom animals are their primary productive asset, creating employment opportunities in the rural economy and reducing poverty. Furthermore, for the many communities who rely on working and other animals for their livelihoods, improving how their animals are cared for will help keep them from the cycle of poverty.
A missing piece in the SDG puzzle
The SDGs provide the blueprint for “peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.” This may seem like an insurmountable feat. And it is insurmountable if we carry on as before. What is clear is that, without changing our relationship with animals, we have no hope of reaching these ambitious SDGs.
The way we raise, trade, and consume farmed animals is an example of the nexus between animal welfare and hunger, health, climate change, and poverty. But this is an example. Whether wild, farmed, or companion, animal welfare is a lever for sustainable development. Being kind to animals is not just "a nice to have" but a "need to have" if we want to have any hope of a more prosperous future, for the planet and all who live in it.
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Development Banks’ Factory Farm Investments Harm the Climate and Local Communities
Despite clear evidence of the harms of industrial livestock, new research showed that in 2024, 11 leading international finance institutions invested $1.23 billion in factory farming and wider industrial animal agriculture supply chains.
Jul 06, 2025
The World Bank’s mission is to “create a world free of poverty on a livable planet.” However, the institution, along with its peer development partners, pumps billions of dollars into factory farming, appearing to turn a blind eye to the significant harm it causes.
We cannot meet the 1.5°C Paris agreement goal without reducing emissions from livestock. Animal agriculture is a leading cause of climate breakdown; already responsible for around 16% of global greenhouse gas emissions and set to rise.
Factory farming is also tearing apart our thriving ecosystems. In Latin America, high demand for industrial grazing pasture and land for growing animal feed has fueled devastating deforestation: 84% of all Latin America’s forest loss in the last 50 years can be attributed to land claimed for livestock farming. Factory farming also pollutes soils and freshwater sources that wild animals and rural communities rely on.
Development banks tasked with tackling poverty and climate change owe it to current and future generations to use their investments to help spur the transition toward more sustainable diets and forms of food production.
Yet despite clear evidence of the harms of industrial livestock, new research I conducted for the Stop Financing Factory Farming Coalition (S3F), based on data from the Early Warning System, showed that in 2024, 11 leading international finance institutions (IFI) invested $1.23 billion in factory farming and wider industrial animal agriculture supply chains. This is five times more than what they spend on more sustainable non-industrial animal agriculture projects. The World Bank and its private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), were together responsible for over half the funding for industrial animal agriculture.
One of the investments IFC made last year was a $40 million loan to build a soybean crushing plant in Bangladesh, used to mass-produce animal feed. The soybeans will require an estimated 354,000 hectares of land annually to be grown, and will be sourced from Brazil and Argentina where soy production is associated with destruction of sensitive ecosystems. Communities living near the plant have documented the existing and potential impacts such as the contamination of coastal waters and freshwater sources, which would consequently lead to a reduction in the local fish stocks that local communities rely on to guarantee their livelihoods, and brought their concerns in front of representatives of the U.S. government.
Over the last 20 years, IFC has also made a number of investments in Pronaca, the largest food producer in Ecuador, to expand its factory farm operations. The company has built pig and poultry farms in Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, a region home to natural forest and Indigenous Peoples. Local Indigenous communities documented how the farms have polluted water resources that are traditionally used to sustain their livelihoods, forcing community members to migrate to preserve their traditional cultures.
Other IFIs have also made harmful investments. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) boldly claims all its investments have been Paris-aligned since January 2023; however, recent spending to expand multinational fast food chains in Eastern Europe seem to show a different scenario. During the first half of 2025, the EBRD has provided $10 million for the expansion of KFC and Taco Bell restaurants in the Western Balkans, and proposed an equity investment of $46 million for the expansion of Burger King and Louisiana Popeyes in Poland, Romania, and Czech Republic.
The latter investment would have led to the opening of 600 restaurants in the region, with large adverse impacts in terms of public health and emissions of greenhouse gases. Restaurant Brands International, which owns Burger King and Popeyes, reported approximately 29 million metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions along its value chain in 2024, more than the entire emissions of Northern Ireland. Thankfully, following civil society pressure, the investment was not approved by the EBRD’s Board of Directors.
While the overall picture is bleak, there is real room for hope. Between 2023 and 2024, IFI investments in factory farming nearly halved, and investments in more sustainable approaches tripled, from $77 million to US$244 million. Examples of promising investments include the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency and the Inter-American Development Bank providing support to smallholder farmers using climate-friendly techniques.
This is clearly good news; however, it remains too early to tell if these figures are a one-off blip, or part of a longer-term trend. My hope is that the next round of investment data will show that harmful investments have dropped further—if not stopped completely—and more sustainable ones additionally increased.
Development banks tasked with tackling poverty and climate change owe it to current and future generations to use their investments to help spur the transition toward more sustainable diets and forms of food production, rather than replicating and expanding the broken systems that are wrecking our planet. By only investing in animal agriculture projects that are sustainable—following agroecological principles such as promoting species diversity and using nature’s resources efficiently—banks can help move us closer toward “a world free of poverty on a livable planet.”
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The International Finance Corporation’s Dubious Defense of Factory Farming
Instead of funding industrial agriculture the IFC should help small-scale farmers move to agroecology and regenerative farming which can boost yields, reduce the use of expensive inputs, and improve livelihoods.
Apr 30, 2025
The International Finance Corporation’s website brands many of the well-founded criticisms of industrial animal production as “myths.” This reflects the regrettably polarized debate between those who believe that industrial agriculture is needed to feed the growing world population and those who, like me, argue that a far-reaching transformation of our food system is needed.
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) website states that it is a myth that industrial animal production is bad for food security. The truth, however, is that factory farming diverts food away from people; it is dependent on feeding grain—corn, wheat, barley—to animals who convert these crops very inefficiently into meat and milk. For every 100 calories of human-edible cereals fed to animals, just 7-27 calories (depending on the species) enter the human food chain as meat. And for every 100 grams of protein in human-edible cereals fed to animals, only 13-37 grams of protein enter the human food chain as meat.
The scale of this is massive. International Grains Council data show that 45% of global grain production is used as animal feed, while 76% of world soy production is used to feed animals. The inefficiency of doing this is recognized by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), which states that it is “essential to fight food insecurity and malnutrition… Reducing the use of much of the world's grain production to feed animals and producing more food for direct human consumption can significantly contribute to this objective.” I calculate that if the use of cereals as animal feed were ended, an extra 2 billion people could be fed even allowing for the fact that if we reared fewer animals we would need to grow more crops for direct human consumption. My figure is very cautious; other studies calculate that ending the use of grains as animal feed would enable an extra 3.5-4 billion people to be fed. Moreover, industrial livestock’s huge demand for these cereals pushes up their price, potentially placing them out of reach of poor populations in the Global South. So, sorry IFC, but it really is not a myth to say that industrial animal production is bad for food security.
To dismiss the harsh suffering endured by industrially farmed animals as a myth is extraordinary
The IFC website dismisses as a myth the argument that industrial animal production is bad for the environment. However, factory farms disgorge large amounts of manure, slurry, and ammonia that pollute air and watercourses. When ammonia mixes with other gases it can form particulate matter; this is a key component of air pollution, which can lead to heart and pulmonary disease, respiratory problems including asthma, and lung cancer.
Industrial livestock’s huge demand for cereals as feed has been a key factor fuelling the intensification of crop production. This pivotal link between the livestock and arable sectors is often not recognized. With its monocultures and high use of chemical pesticides and nitrogen fertilizers, intensive crop production leads to soil degradation, biodiversity loss, and overuse and pollution of water. In short, it erodes the key fundamentals—soils, water, and biodiversity—on which our future ability to feed ourselves depends.
Arjem Hoekstra (2020) calculates that animals fed on cereals and soy (industrially farmed animals) use 43 times as much surface- and groundwater and are 61 times as polluting of water as animals fed on grass and other roughages. Its adherents claim that factory farming saves land by cramming animals into crowded sheds. But in reality it eats up huge amounts of cropland for feed. European Union studies show that feed production accounts for 99% of the land use of the pig and broiler sectors. It is feed production—not the tiny amount of space given to animals on the farm—that makes factory farming so land-hungry.
The contention that industrial systems undermine the socioeconomic potential of small-scale farmers in the developing world is also branded a myth by the IFC. The World Bank, however, takes a different view. Its 2024 report Recipe for a Liveable Planet states, “The global agrifood system disproportionately and detrimentally affects poor communities and smallholder farmers who cannot compete with industrial agriculture, thereby exacerbating rural poverty and increasing landlessness.” Instead of funding industrial agriculture the IFC should help small-scale farmers move to agroecology and regenerative farming which can boost yields, reduce the use of expensive inputs, and improve livelihoods.
Also swatted aside as a myth is the mountain of scientific evidence that industrial livestock production results in poor animal welfare. To dismiss the harsh suffering endured by industrially farmed animals as a myth is extraordinary. In its own Good Practice Note on animal welfare the IFC lists what are commonly recognized to be the key characteristics of factory farming—confinement in narrow stalls, overcrowding, barren environments, painful procedures, hunger, and breeding for high yields leading to health disorders—and identifies them as “welfare risks” that need to be tackled. But now, in a remarkable volte-face, the IFC airily dismisses these problems as a myth.
IFC’s position stands in sharp contrast to UNEP, which states that “intensive systems deprive animals of some of their most basic physical and psychological needs.” World Bank economist Berk Özler has written about the value of policies under which low-income countries can grow without causing massive increases in suffering among farmed animals. He writes, “Perhaps many low-income countries can leapfrog the stage of industrial animal farming, towards something more sensible.”
I urge the IFC to recognize that industrial animal agriculture is destructive—destructive of food security, the environment, small-scale farmer livelihoods, and the well-being of animals.
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