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illuminem summarizes for you the essential news of the day. Read the full piece on The Guardian or enjoy below:
🗞️ Driving the news: A comprehensive economic study suggests that transforming the global food system could yield up to $10 trillion in annual benefits, improve health, and significantly mitigate the climate crisis
• The current food system is found to be more destructive than beneficial, contributing to environmental and medical costs.
🔭 The context: Food systems are responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions and are a major factor in climate change, leading to potentially catastrophic temperature rises
• The study, likened to the influential Stern review on climate change, emphasizes the enormous hidden costs in the current food system, including impacts on human health and environmental degradation.
🌍 Why it matters for the planet: The study highlights the severe environmental impact of current food practices, including their contribution to global warming, biodiversity loss, and excessive freshwater use
• A reformed food system could be a significant step towards reducing these impacts and achieving global sustainability goals.
⏭️ What's next: The proposed transformation includes shifting subsidies from harmful large-scale monocultures to sustainable practices, changing diets, and investing in efficient technologies
• This could eradicate undernutrition, decrease premature deaths, and limit global warming, but it requires significant economic investment and political will.
💬 One quote: "The global food system holds the future of humanity on Earth in its hand," said Johan Rockström, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and one of the study's authors.
📈 One stat: The hidden costs of the current food system, including its impact on climate change, health, and natural resources, are estimated at $15 trillion.
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