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This storytelling series features six case studies of fisher communities organizing for justice and food sovereignty across land and water. These stories surface strategies of resistance, resilience, and survival in the face of systemic injustice and extractive economies. We begin with two stories from Uganda and South Africa.
Food systems generate one-third of global emissions yet receive just 2.5% of public climate finance, down from 3% in 2022. Even less—1.5%—supports truly sustainable solutions. This report highlights the growing funding gap and calls for urgent investment to protect smallholder farmers, fishers, and Indigenous communities, while driving food systems transformation to meet climate goals.
Photo credit: IKEA Foundation, Kilimo Trust & ICIPE (Kenya)
In 2022, the Global Alliance released a report uncovering a critical gap in climate finance for food systems. Food systems are responsible for one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions and the climate crisis disproportionately impacts smallholder farmers, fishers, pastoralists, and Indigenous Peoples who are on the frontlines of the crisis. But only a small fraction of climate finance—less than 3%—was being allocated to fix food systems. This gap highlighted an urgent need to put food systems at the center of climate action and climate funding.
This 2024 update of Public Climate Finance for Food Systems Transformation shows that despite an overall increase in climate finance between 2017 and 2022, the portion of funding for food systems has slipped further, down from 3% to 2.5%, and even further when we consider sustainable food systems, at just 1.5%. This report underscores the urgent need to significantly boost climate finance for sustainable food systems and calls attention to the need for funding to reach communities.
Even as overall public climate finance has increased between 2017 and 2022, the portion going towards food systems has fallen from 3% to 2.5% during this time. Furthermore, public climate finance towards sustainable food systems is even smaller at just 1.5% This calls for an urgent scaling up of public funding to address the impacts of the climate crisis on frontline communities and to tackle emissions from food systems which are contributing to climate chaos.Â
Photo credit: SELCO Foundation & IKEA Foundation (Global Alliance Member)
Locally weaved baskets are used to harvest organic cacao. Photo credit: Murray Cooper