Digital technologies underpin modern economic growth. Semiconductors, data centres and electronics are expanding rapidly alongside artificial intelligence, cloud computing and high-performance computing, reshaping how economies function and scale. Yet, this growth comes with a rising and often underappreciated cost: a significant dependency on, and impact on, natural systems, including water, land, energy, minerals, and biodiversity.
The World Economic Forum’s “Nature Positive: The Role of the Technology Sector” (2025), developed in collaboration with Oliver Wyman, makes a compelling case that nature is no longer a peripheral concern for sustainability. It is becoming a binding constraint on growth, resilience and social licence to operate, particularly for infrastructure-heavy and resource-intensive sectors. For investors and entrepreneurs operating at the intersection of ClimateTech and AgriFoodTech, the implications are profound.
Nature as a Systemic Risk—and Opportunity
More than 50% of global GDP depends directly on nature, yet corporate and financial systems remain poorly aligned with this reality. While climate targets have become mainstream, only a small minority of companies have set targets related to water use or biodiversity, and even fewer have assessed their dependencies on nature.
For the technology sector, this gap is already translating into material risk. The report highlights multiple examples of data-centre projects delayed or cancelled due to water scarcity, energy constraints and community opposition. Similar dynamics are emerging across supply chains dependent on critical minerals, land availability and stable ecosystems.
At the same time, this misalignment creates opportunity. The WEF estimates that nature-positive actions across the technology value chain could unlock up to USD 800 billion in cost savings and revenue upside by 2030, driven by efficiency gains, circularity, material recovery and more resilient supply chains. Nature, in this context, shifts from an externality to a driver of competitive advantage.
Tech’s Nature Footprint: Where the Pressure Is Highest
The report focuses on three core subsectors—semiconductors, data centres, and hardware/electronics—whose impacts are highly relevant for food and climate systems:
- Water: Semiconductor manufacturing consumes over 1 trillion litres of freshwater annually, while data centres increasingly compete with communities and agriculture for scarce water resources in key hubs.
- Energy and emissions: Data centres consume more than 60 GW globally, intensifying pressure on power grids and increasing emissions when powered by fossil fuels.
- Materials, pollution and waste: The sector relies heavily on critical minerals and generates roughly 60 billion kg of e-waste per year, with less than 25% recycled.
These dependencies expose companies to physical risks, regulatory pressure, rising costs and delays. But they also underline the need for technologies that improve efficiency, resilience and measurability across natural systems.
A ClimateTech & AgriFoodTech Lens: Why This Matters for Food Systems
From GLOCAL’s perspective, the report strongly reinforces a core insight embedded in our Clean AgriFoodTech Playbook: nature constraints are becoming growth constraints, and the food system sits at the center of this transition.
This disconnect is particularly acute at the intersection of:
- Agriculture, the largest user of land and freshwater globally
- Food systems, which are highly exposed to climate volatility and biodiversity loss
- Digital and physical infrastructure, increasingly constrained by water, energy and community acceptance
For Latin America—one of the world’s most critical food-producing regions— this convergence creates both systemic risk and outsized opportunity. Technologies that enable more efficient, resilient and transparent food systems are no longer optional; they are becoming foundational infrastructure.
AgriFoodTech as an Enabler of Nature-Positive Transitions
While the WEF report focuses on the technology sector broadly, its conclusions clearly support the role of ClimateTech and AgriFoodTech as enabling layers of the nature-positive transition. Priority action areas such as water efficiency, circularity, emissions reduction beyond energy, land stewardship and supply-chain transparency map directly to GLOCAL’s core investment focus, including:
- Precision agriculture and digital agronomy
- Biologicals, soil health and nature-based inputs
- Water efficiency, monitoring and reuse
- Traceability, MRV (Monitoring, Reporting and Verification) and nature-related data infrastructure
- Climate-smart finance and risk tools for farmers and agribusinesses
In this context, AgriFoodTech is not peripheral to the tech–nature transition—it is foundational.
Alignment with GLOCAL’s Clean AgriFoodTech Playbook
The WEF’s findings validate several principles that underpin GLOCAL’s investment approach:
- Adoption-first solutions: Nature-positive outcomes require technologies that integrate seamlessly into existing farming and agribusiness workflows, lowering friction and accelerating scale.
- Capital efficiency and time-to-impact: Solutions that deliver measurable efficiency gains—water, inputs, energy—are better aligned with venture economics and real-world constraints.
- System-level resilience: Technologies that reduce exposure to climate volatility, regulatory risk and resource scarcity strengthen long-term value creation.
- Measurability and disclosure: The growing importance of frameworks such as the TNFD (Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures), the SBTN (Science Based Targets Network) and CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) reinforces demand for startups enabling data, monitoring and verification across food and climate systems.
These dynamics align closely with GLOCAL’s focus on subsectors where venture-scale returns and environmental impact reinforce each other, rather than compete.
Implications for Investors and the Ecosystem
Less than 3% of the financing required for a nature-positive economy is currently being met, underscoring the scale of the opportunity. A meaningful share of the estimated USD 800 billion in value could be captured by ClimateTech and AgriFoodTech companies that enable:
- Resource efficiency at farm and supply-chain level
- Compliance with emerging nature-related disclosure and regulation
- New business models around restoration, resilience and circularity
The nature-positive transition is not a separate agenda from ClimateTech or AgriFoodTech—it is the next evolution of both. GLOCAL’s Clean AgriFoodTech Playbook is designed to capture this shift by backing technologies that translate nature constraints into scalable solutions, investable growth and long-term resilience across food and climate systems.
