Significant Progress and Missed Alternatives on Meals System Emissions

COP27: Significant Progress and Missed Alternatives on Meals System Emissions

Picture: Carlo “Granchius” Bonini https://www.flickr.com/images/granchius/2709808416

In keeping with information developed by the Meals and Agriculture Group, world meals methods are chargeable for practically a 3rd of whole GHG emissions. Nonetheless, world leaders and policymakers have been gradual to deal with meals methods as a precedence space for deep decarbonization.

When leaders met in Egypt for this 12 months’s COP27 local weather convention, many observers have been hopeful that the position of meals methods in world local weather change — each as main emission sources and as alternatives for vital cuts — would lastly be addressed within the high-level local weather negotiations.

Other than thrilling new additions to the Blue Zone and references to meals and agriculture within the last draft cowl textual content, what precisely did policymakers decide to — or keep away from — in the course of the COP27 deliberations? And did the convention absolutely ship on its billing as the primary “meals COP”?

A missed alternative

Going into this 12 months’s convention, one of the crucial necessary developments associated to meals methods and local weather motion centered on the efforts to outline a successor to the Korinivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA).

The Korinivia settlement was finalized in 2017 throughout COP23 and was the primary official UN recognition of agriculture as a crucial part and potential device in worldwide local weather change efforts.

With the KJWA now about to run out, many observers and coverage advocates signed an open letter urging world leaders at COP27 to undertake a brand new settlement centered on implementing the KJWA findings to chop food-related emissions and assist create “sustainable, equitable, and resilient meals methods” aligned with 1.5-degree local weather pathways.

However many specialists and food-climate advocates expressed disappointment with the ensuing draft settlement, which did not retain language round “sustainable meals methods” that will have helped guarantee an bold and holistic strategy to mitigating agrifood system emissions.

This language was scaled again in response to resistance from the G77 group of nations and others. China needed to keep away from introducing new, less-defined meals methods references, and the US most popular to deal with supply-side options that avoid politically delicate points, corresponding to sustainable diets and diet.

The result’s a brand new four-year mandate to deal with the implementation of KJWA actions with a slim deal with agriculture and meals safety, quite than the hoped-for broader meals methods strategy.

Whereas this mandate will definitely show necessary, there’s basic settlement from many civil society and coverage specialists that the COP27 negotiators failed to totally seize the chance to re-center world meals system transformations as a significant device to deal with our urgent local weather and meals crises.

Different food-related initiatives and developments

Happily, there have been a number of different food-related initiatives and bulletins which will show to be thrilling sooner or later.

The UN’s Meals and Agriculture Group (FAO) and the Egyptian Presidency overseeing this 12 months’s COP introduced the Meals and Agriculture for Sustainable Transformation initiative to speed up funding in meals methods aligned with a resilient, food-secure 1.5-degree pathway.

Equally, the WHO, FAO, and the World Alliance for Improved Diet launched the Initiative on Local weather Motion and Diet to supply planning and technical help for governments, agrifood industries, and monetary establishments to design insurance policies and motion on the intersection of local weather and world diet.

13 international locations now acknowledge and endorse the Breakthrough Agenda, a plan to speed up the decarbonization of energy methods, highway transport, metal, hydrogen and the agriculture sector. The plan goals to spice up funding in agricultural analysis, growth and demonstration to fulfill the dual challenges of meals insecurity and a climate-friendly meals system.

The US additionally launched the World Fertilizer Problem to assist deal with the worldwide shortages associated to the struggle in Ukraine. This system doubles the preliminary investments and attain of the Agricultural Innovation Mission for Local weather initiative, rushing up funding for climate-sensitive and sustainable meals methods over the following three years.

A brand new roadmap for meals system transformations

Maybe most enjoyable, nonetheless, is the FAO’s dedication to supply a roadmap for the meals and agricultural sectors to decarbonize in alignment with the Paris Settlement’s aim of limiting world warming to 1.5-degrees.

The plan will search to supply decision-ready information and readability to firms, buyers, and policymakers to allow a simply transition inside agriculture and meals methods.

Set to be launched by COP28 subsequent 12 months, the FAO’s roadmap may serve the same operate because the Worldwide Power Company’s annual World Power Outlook analyses, which have helped drive investments and coverage choices within the ongoing transition to low-carbon vitality methods.

In an effort to be really efficient, this new meals methods roadmap must be accompanied by efforts to outline an internationally standardized greenhouse-gas accounting framework for nationwide meals methods, which is able to assist international locations higher measure, handle, and mitigate their food-related emissions.

The accounting framework would additionally help the flexibility of nationwide governments to design and submit enhanced nationally decided contributions underneath the Paris Settlement to incorporate meals system transformations that handle local weather change.

Residents and stakeholder teams will even be capable of leverage the roadmap to grasp and examine the meals and agricultural emissions footprints of various international locations and areas and maintain leaders to account for perceived shortcomings inside their meals system local weather motion plans.

Within the wake of the narrowly outlined Korinivia successor, every of those initiatives ought to — if efficiently funded and applied — assist to additional join world local weather mitigation and adaptation efforts to facilitate pressing meals system transformations.

The decision

Taken collectively, it appears greater than truthful to recollect COP27 as the primary convention to totally acknowledge and embrace discussions of agriculture and meals methods on the highest ranges of worldwide local weather change negotiations.

Whereas the successor to the Korinivia settlement might lack the scope and ambition that many observers hoped for, the inclusion of food-related initiatives throughout the convention agenda — from the ground of the Meals Methods Pavilion to the foremost new applications by the FAO — displays an necessary recognition of the inextricable connections between our world local weather and meals crises.

However as with the lengthy historical past of worldwide local weather commitments, the precise wording of agreements and the thrilling bulletins of latest initiatives matter far lower than the tougher work of implementation, coordination, and accountability.

Policymakers and stakeholders from throughout the vitality, local weather, and meals and agricultural sectors might want to construct off the achievements of COP27 to additional speed up new mitigation and adaptation efforts, guarantee a simply transition that empowers smallholder farmers and contains applicable demand-side actions in developed international locations, and assist create the sustainable, equitable, and climate-resilient meals methods wanted to fulfill our future meals and local weather calls for.

Benjamin Ritter is a graduate scholar in Columbia College’s Faculty of Worldwide and Public Affairs. Kevin Karl is a analysis affiliate at Columbia College’s Heart on World Power Coverage, the place he focuses on the intersection of meals methods and local weather change as a member of the Meals Local weather Partnership.

The Meals Local weather Partnership is a consortium of scientists and coverage practitioners from Columbia Local weather Faculty’s Heart for Local weather Methods Analysis and Heart on World Power Coverage, the Agricultural Mannequin Intercomparison and Enchancment Challenge, and New York College’s Faculty of Environmental Research. The group helps the Meals and Agriculture Group of the United Nations in its environmental statistics work.