The sovereign transition to sustainability and healthy food systems – the case of Brazil
Theme: Macroeconomic stability and food security
The short-term acute shock of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted many vulnerabilities of a just-in-time food production and distribution model, while longer term systemic shocks to food and agriculture production are being exacerbated by climate change, water stress, ongoing globalisation, and heightening political instability. The current dynamics of food systems are driving a collapse of ecosystems on a planetary scale. Food-related planetary boundaries which demarcate the safe operating space for human development such as the nitrogen cycle are already breached, and 820 million people go undernourished each day. Failing to achieve a global transition to sustainable food systems presents an existential threat to society directly in the form of lost food security and food poverty; financial markets via heightened equity, bond and credit risk; and governments needing to replace not only lost food production but related earnings.
Structure: Report Presentation, Panel Presentation, Q&A
Target Audience: Emerging Market sovereign bond investors and analyst; emerging market macroeconomists; policy makers; financial media.
Host Organisation: Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics and Planet Tracker