The Good Food Finance Network (GFFN) released its “Blueprint for Good Food Finance Data Systems Integration” in May 2024.
Integrated Data Systems Initiative ambition statement: “The Integrated Data Systems Initiative aims to provide financial decision-makers in the public, private, and multilateral sectors with new tools to assess the landscape of risk and opportunity (wider, long-term value-creation potential) inherent in resilience-building practices, emerging business models, and standardize the practice of ‘good food finance.’”
The Integrated Data Systems Initiative is a five-year innovation sprint, organized by the Good Food Finance Network (GFFN) and recognized by the 2023 Agriculture Innovation Mission (AIM) for Climate Summit. The GFFN releasing the “Blueprint for Good Food Finance Data Systems Integration” marks the culmination of Year 1 of that sprint.
As the GFFN website states, the Integrated Data Systems Initiative’s aim is to provide multidimensional decision support for financial institutions and policy-makers, to support the mainstreaming of finance for healthy, sustainable food systems.
This multidimensional approach will draw on existing and emerging standards for financial and ESG accounting and performance tracking. The resulting data systems will feed into a new financial mechanism—the Co-Investment Platform for Food Systems Transformation—which will convert such insights into real-world financial interventions.
Key messages from the report include:
Never before in human history has it been more important that we understand the extent of our impacts on the Earth system and its ecological life-supports.
We need to develop data systems that are complex enough to not misrepresent the complexities of the living world, while producing integrated metrics that are easy to understand and act on, even for non-experts.
The prevalence of affordable nutrition and good health shapes the overall quality of life and economic vibrancy of whole societies.
Multidimensional metrics, based on integrated data systems, that provide summit to seabed health and resilience insights, can support new SME business models that diversify and revitalize local and rural economies.
Animal welfare was among the many important topics included in the report, essentially outlining that animal welfare is an important component of a “sustainable food system.” The report states, “Animal welfare is a major point of interest for consumers, and can help to shape food systems to be more sustainable, more investable, and more conducive to good health outcomes for people. We will detail in future briefs building on this report some of the specific ways data related to animal welfare can improve the health and resilience of natural systems, deliver improved health benefits to people, and improve the overall inevitability of sustainable food systems.”
ABOUT: The Good Food Finance Network was created by the EAT Foundation, the FAIRR Initiative, Food Systems for the Future, the UN Environment Programme, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development—alongside the UN Food Systems Summit in September 2021—to support critical innovations across the landscape of food-related finance.