By Elwyn Grainger-Jones, Executive Director, CGIAR System Organization
Going into debt with nature is a dangerous thing. When our stocks of water, land and clean air are spent – we don’t have a second planet to borrow from. But that’s exactly the way that Earth is heading. 1 August 2018 marks an annual event, “Earth Overshoot Day”: the day on which the natural resources the planet can regenerate within one year are exhausted. This is the earliest date on which Earth Overshoot Day has ever been reached.
One of the greatest pressure points pushing the planet to its limits is our food system. This is the way that humans grow, produce, transport and consume food. As these systems currently operate, they’re contributing negatively to climate change and deforestration; they’re compromising freshwater stocks and rapidly reducing biodiversity.
Food systems must be transformed to produce more nutritious food with a lower environmental footprint. There are a number of initiatives around the world working towards this end. Here are just five that use different kinds of science – from smart approaches to breeding livestock and crops to recycling wastewater – that could help humans settle their growing debt to the planet… Read more