Understanding investment gaps in innovation
As the world’s looks to its future food systems, innovation plays a key role in reducing global hunger, improving nutrition, mitigating climate change, and sustainably managing the earth’s land and water resources.
The Commision on Sustainable Agricultural Intensification (CoSAI) is a collaborator of the IFSS portal initiative and brings together agricultural and food systems experts and decision-makers from the Global South, collaborating with scientists, innovators and partner organizations from across the globe. The research-based evidence from CoSAI aims to support much-needed investment in innovation for sustainable agricultural intensification in the Global South. CoSAI's current studies have provided insight into the current baseline of innovation investment and the innovation investment gap that needs to be filled to meet global health and climate goals.
CoSAI - Who are they? What are they doing?
How can the Global South strengthen agricultural systems and accelerate agricultural production to deliver broad access to affordable, safe and nutritious foods, while at the same time protecting and improving natural ecosystems, and reducing poverty and inequality?
To answer this, CoSAI is building a portfolio of research-based evidence to support the needed investment in innovation for sustainable agriculture intensification in the Global South. To learn more about CoSAI and get to know the Commissioners visit the CoSAI website.
How can we do innovation better?
Understand the approaches and instruments required to sustainably fill the funding gap and achieve global goals on hunger, climate, and water sustainability. The various pieces of evidence explore how well different innovation investment approaches and instruments support sustainable agricultural intensification (SAI) objectives, look at case studies that have achieved SAI innovation success at scale, and review of innovation in financial mechanisms to support an inclusive sustainability transition in agriculture.
How can we measure our progress?
Understanding the investment landscape and how to do innovation better, CoSAI is helping tackle a major challenge for both implementers and investors in innovation: determining whether an investment in innovation ‘counts’ as promoting sustainable agri-food systems (SAS) objectives. Developing a clear set of principles and metrics for planning, guiding, and monitoring innovation investments against SAS objectives, the principles and metrics aim to encourage and support a higher level of investments in innovation with environmental and social goals.
What does the investment landscape look like?
To discover how much is being spent on agricultural innovation in the food supply chain, who is investing, and how much of these investments are contributing to environmental and social objectives, CoSAI is gathering existing evidence to answer these questions and has also commissioned several studies in areas where there are critical gaps.
This work is providing insight into the current baseline of innovation investment and the innovation investment gap which is required to reduce the risk of global hunger, contribute to keeping warming within 2°C, and improve water management. To read more about what these studies are finding and how they can have impact on policy and funding decisions, DIVE DEEPER INTO THE EVIDENCE.
