By Euronews Green
Published on
Six of Europe’s key food imports are under increasing threat from biodiversity loss and climate change, a new report warns.
Commissioned by philanthropic initiative the European Climate Foundation, UK consultants Foresight Transitions examined the vulnerability of staple crops maize, rice and wheat, as well as cocoa, coffee and soy – key commodities for EU agrifood production and exports.
They found that more than half the imports of these six foodstuffs were from climate vulnerable countries with limited resources to adapt. For three – wheat, maize and cocoa – two-thirds of imports come from countries whose biodiversity is deemed not to be intact.
“These aren’t just abstract threats,” says lead author of the report, Camilla Hyslop. “They are already playing out in ways that negatively affect businesses and jobs, as well as the availability and price of food for consumers, and they are only getting worse.”
The EU’s chocolate industry faces the biggest threat
As the world’s biggest producer and exporter of chocolate, it is the EU’s chocolate industry – worth an estimated €44 billion – that faces the biggest threat from these twin environmental factors.
Around 97 per cent of chocolate’s primary ingredient, cocoa, comes from countries with a low-medium or below climate score, as per the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index. This tool combines a country’s vulnerability to climate damages with its access to financial and institutional support.
And 77 per cent of cocoa comes from countries with a medium or below biodiversity rating, according to a ranking of biodiversity intactness from the UK’s Natural History Museum, which compares the current abundance of wild species to pre-modern levels.
The researchers mapped trade data from Eurostat onto these two rankings of environmental security for all six commodities.
In the case of cocoa, European imports come from a few main countries in West Africa – Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria – all of which are experiencing overlapping and intensifying climate and biodiversity impacts.
“The European Union has forked out an increasing price for cocoa imports as a result of these environmental pressures, with the total value of imports increasing by 41 per cent over the last year,” says Hyslop.
“The increasing value has also been driven by climate-related increases in the price of sugar, highlighting the environmental ‘double whammy’ facing not only chocolatiers but other kinds of producers using multiple environmentally-sensitive inputs.”
Chocolate prices have gone up 43 per cent in the last three years, according to a recent analysis by green think tank Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), with ‘chocflation’ evident on supermarket shelves.
How biodiversity loss makes climate impacts worse
While previous studies have assessed the climate vulnerability of food imports, the new research stands out for its focus on biodiversity loss and how these two environmental factors interact.
“Climate impacts are made worse by declining biodiversity, which leave farms and surrounding ecosystems far less resilient to climate and other shocks,” explains Hyslop.
“Not only are less biodiverse farms less resilient to crop disease – these diseases often emerge due to decreased biodiversity.”
On top of this, yields are diminished by the clearing of native vegetation, which can alter local microclimates. While practices such as monocropping – where a crop like wheat is exclusively grown – deplete the soil on which food production depends.
European climate impacts are making the EU more dependent on imports
One response to this rising insecurity in Europe’s supply chains is to produce more food on the continent.
But, argues Dr Mark Workman, director of Foresight Transitions and co-author of the report, this ‘reshoring’ would by itself be a wholly insufficient response.
“Not only would the EU struggle to grow some of these commodities in large quantities, it is facing its own climate and biodiversity threats – not to mention the unpalatable land-use implications of significant reshoring of food production.”
Hyslop underscores the global nature of the climate crisis, too. While higher rainfall in 2024 left cocoa rotting in West Africa, she writes, floods in the UK and France decreased wheat production, and high temperatures in Eastern Europe disrupted maize crops – making imports crucial for food security.
“It is therefore entirely in the self-interest of EU policymakers to get serious about investing in the climate resilience of partner producers as well as overseas trading infrastructure such as ports that support this trade and are also subject to environmental stresses,” adds Workman.
“This is an important message to convey at a time when overseas aid budgets are often being pitted against investments in defence and security – but the truth is they are two sides of the same coin.”
Policy recommendations the report sets out include measures to support smallholder farmers, who supply the majority of cocoa to the EU. And, “the most obvious” one, strong climate mitigation policies, which will have positive benefits for all supplier countries.