The world’s food systems have been in dire straits, even before Vladimir Putin’s latest, horrendous war and the resulting supply disruptions. Global leadership is required. To deliver on the United Nations (UN)’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), priorities at December’s COP15 biodiversity summit need to be aligned with the COP climate summits, both held under the auspices of the UN. This seems probable; this month’s COP27 is hosted by Egypt, while COP28 will be hosted by the United Arab Emirates. Both countries have high food import requirements[1].

According to the OECD[2] , the estimated SDG financing gap for developing countries totaled US$3.7 trillion in 2020, boosted by additional spending during the Covid pandemic and after drops in external private financing. SDG financial flows can come in many forms across the public and private sectors as well as from domestic and external sources. These include official development assistance as well as private or blended SDG financing vehicles. Plenty of publicly listed companies claim to be aligned with SDG goals. However, we note that simply directing investments via screening tools to such equities is unlikely to close the investment gap in the short-term, as their capital is already deployed. More effective action is needed and likely to come from new forms of capital, such as green bonds. This raises the question which areas investors should consider focusing on.