When it comes to climate change, the world’s food system is a double-edged sword. Food production is both one of the biggest emitters of global greenhouse gases and one of the sectors hardest hit by the effects of climate change. To reconcile these two issues, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization on Sunday set out an unprecedented roadmap for solutions. But the topic rarely makes it to the negotiating table.
Besides limiting rising temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, safeguarding food security and ending hunger were key objectives of the Paris Climate Change Agreement back in 2015. But NGOs and scientists argue that food and agriculture aren’t addressed enough at the negotiating table of the annual UN climate change conference, COP.
So on December 10, during this year’s conference COP28, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) decided to put its foot down. It published a roadmap of actions governments could take to combat both food insecurity and climate change. The report, according to the FAO, comes at a “time of urgencies”.
The global food system is extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change, which have a significant impact on agriculture. Malnutrition has been on the rise for years, with 9% of the global population suffering from chronic hunger and a third from severe food insecurity, according to the FAO.
“But food production is also one of the main drivers of climate change. It accounts for about a third of all man-made global greenhouse gas emissions,” says Marie Cosquer, a food systems and climate crisis analyst at Action Against Hunger, a global NGO aimed at combatting hunger. “For a long time, governments and institutions tended to present the issues as separate opposing battles. Some claimed that in order to feed the entire planet, we needed to produce more food. But now there is clear evidence that our global food system is no longer working because hunger is becoming more widespread.”
“The FAO report is an important step forward because it dismantles the notion that [food production and climate change] are opposing issues,” says Quentin Ghesquière, agriculture and food safety advisor at Oxfam. “Multiple studies have shown that the driver of food insecurity is above all access to and distribution of food,” he insists.
National action plans for 2030
In its roadmap, the FAO has outlined a series of actions countries can take to address these two issues simultaneously. It calls on states to draw up national “Country Action Plans” in ten key domains like clean energy, crops and food waste by 2030. Actions include “changing food taxes and subsidies to provide consumers with incentives to consume healthy diets”, “improving food production, harvesting and distribution practices” and “protect equitable access to resources”.
While “the actions to be taken are still vague and not very concrete,” Cosquer says, the FAO has also put forward quantified targets. The number of people suffering from chronic hunger worldwide should fall to 150 million by 2025 (about 735 million people faced chronic hunger in 2022) and should reach zero by 2030. By 2050, the entire global population should be able to consume a healthy diet.
In parallel, the FAO has also set out the goal of cutting global greenhouse gas emissions by agrifood systems down to 25% by 2030 and reaching carbon neutrality by 2035, so that agrifood systems become carbon sinks by 2050.
These “ambitious objectives … pave the way for interesting and fundamental debates on how they will be achieved”, says Ghesquière. The report is part one of a trilogy – part two and three will be published in 2024 and 2025. “That’s what we’re impatiently waiting for, to know the concrete steps we can take to achieve these goals and to tackle funding and national implementation.”
Funding is sure to be a major sticking point in the implementation of the country action plans. According to a 2022 report published by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, only 3% of public climate finance is directed to food systems. What’s even more striking is the fact that the majority (62%) of developed countries did not include measures for food systems in their “nationally determined contribution” (NDC), climate action plans to cut emissions and adapt to climate change. As for developing countries, only 4% of their finance needs are earmarked for implementing food system measures.
‘A good thing’ but ‘not enough’
“Even if it falls short for now, the FAO report is a reminder that we need to act quickly,” says Ghesquière, at a time when food and agriculture are struggling to emerge as a major focus in climate negotiations. On Monday, December 11, when COP28 leaders were preparing for the final sprint to adopt this year’s climate agreement, food and agriculture virtually disappeared from the negotiating table.
And this despite COP28 getting off to a good start. On the second day of the conference, 134 countries including China, Brazil the US and 27 members of the EU rallied behind a proposal by host country UAE to include food and agriculture in their national climate plans by 2025.
“It’s a good thing,” says Cosquer, who is particularly pleased that the declaration maintains “the right to food” as the framework for any action on food systems. “But it’s still not enough, because all the commitments made on the sidelines of the official negotiations are non-binding and are often hard to put into practice”.
Cosquer also criticises the “very vague language and lack of concrete actions or quantifiable targets” in the declaration. “It also doesn’t mention the phasing out of fossil fuels,” she adds. According to analysis published by the Global Alliance for the Future of Food in November 2023, food systems account for at least 15% of all fossil fuels burned globally.
‘No concrete progress’
But Cosquer’s main concern is that the issue quickly stopped being addressed altogether. “There won’t be any concrete progress regarding food and agriculture at COP28,” she sighs. The main reason being the deadlock that ensued from discussions around how to establish a framework for reflection on food and agriculture. “Logistical concerns that conceal all the tensions at play in these negotiations and that have deprived us of a discussion on the topic,” she laments.
The analyst would have liked to see food and agriculture mentioned in the final summary of global climate action at COP28, every word of which is being fiercely debated in the final sprint of the conference. “It’s urgent but unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any political will behind the issue. We know the solutions. We just need to implement the principles of agro-ecology and increase public funding to support food producers,” Cosquer concludes.
This article was written by Cyrielle CABOT
