The WWF’s new tool, the Great Food Puzzle, offers a groundbreaking approach to addressing the global challenges of food systems.
Cape Town, South Africa (15 September 2024) – I’m sure I don’t speak just for myself when I say that good food is enough to turn a bad day into a good one, make an awkward date slightly more bearable and can easily change a foul mood into a cheerful one as you enjoy the delicious flavours of a tasty meal.
But while food is great – for so many reasons – how it is produced and processed is not always great for our planet.
That is why the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has developed the “Great Food Puzzle”, a new tool and research that identifies the highest-impact actions that can be taken by each country based on their environmental and socio-economic characteristics to make our food system more sustainable.
The report highlights that food systems – the production, processing, transportation, and consumption of food – have major global impacts on nature and climate change, but they can only be made sustainable with local solutions.
This new global study done across more than 100 countries classified them into six different Food System Types based on their environmental and socioeconomic characteristics and ranked the highest-impact actions in each.
The inclusion of environmental factors sets the Great Food Puzzle apart from other food system typologies, which is critical given the widespread impact the production of food has on nature and our total dependence on a functioning natural world.
South Africa has been classified alongside Mexico, China, UAE and Spain as having a food system that is already highly industrialised but also facing the highest levels of water risk, especially in the light of climate change projections.
While there is no single set of policy interventions that should be applied globally, the research revealed a consistent need across all countries to optimise land use and restore biodiversity, improve education and knowledge on healthy and sustainable diets, and redesign financial subsidies and incentives..
By finding place-based solutions and building coalitions of actors who can learn from each other and share solutions and stories of success, the Great Food Puzzle has the opportunity to create healthy and sustainable food systems for all.
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After using the Great Food Puzzle to identify the high-priority, high-impact actions in different places, WWF can support implementation through its suite of additional solutions and tools for farmers, policymakers, businesses and consumers and physical presence in over 100 countries.
Mkhululi Silandela, Systems Change Lead with WWF South Africa, said:
“What this comprehensive study confirms is that transformation plans must be rooted in local cultures and context and built with multi-stakeholder approaches. It is within our power to create a healthier and more sustainable food system, especially if we focus on production, consumption and food loss and waste at multiple levels of society.”
Brent Loken, Global Food Lead Scientist at WWF, also noted that food systems are extremely complex and are shaped by lots of factors, including cultural heritage, values and local contexts.
“That means there are no silver bullets that will work everywhere and reverse the devastating impact that current food systems have on nature and human health. The Great Food Puzzle approach helps all stakeholders to identify science-based actions based on local context, or place-based solutions, that will deliver the biggest wins for people and the planet in the shortest time.”
Sources: World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)
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