This Year’s Three UN Summits Set the Stage for COP30 to Transform Food Systems – Global Issues
NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 24 (IPS) – This year has been a landmark year for climate and environmental policy. Starting with the COP16 UN talks on biodiversity in October, followed by the COP29 climate talks in November, and closing with the COP16 on desertification in December, few years have provided such critical moments back to back.
This creates an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen food systems against climate change, improve their environmental impacts, and support smallholder farmers – some of the people most affected by climate change, land degradation and biodiversity loss.
At all conferences, negotiators broadly agreed on the need to integrate food systems with the three UN environmental bodies, a step in the right direction given the intersection of food and agriculture, and the environment in general. However, in order to build on the UAE’s outstanding Declaration on food systems at the COP28 climate talks in 2023, the global community must urgently step up funding and action to make good on the ambitious goals set.
In other words, the next 12 months of COP30 climate talks in Brazil are important to the “talk” of the COPs this year. To take full advantage of food systems supporting environmental and climate goals, several steps are needed.
The first is increased investment in low-emission technology and food system innovation. This includes both investment in new and emerging solutions as well as financing to expand existing technology.
Just as increased investment and support in recent decades has led to the growth of solar energy, causing the price of solar panels to drop significantly and become cheaper than fossil fuels, food systems require similar long-term and sustainable investment. Channeling international funds into agricultural research and development will accelerate and scale up affordable, impactful, and clean technologies that reduce pollution and enhance biodiversity while supporting adaptation and rural livelihoods.
Green ammonia, for example, is a promising new sector for food and agriculture. Reduce emissions from fertilizer production by using renewable energy sources, such as wind or solar power, to run the traditional Haber-Bosch process. But for now, raw ammonia is more expensive than its fossil-based alternative, and requires more research to achieve cost-effective production in the coming years.
Second, funds are urgently needed to cover costs and potential short-term losses as farmers adopt less productive, regenerative farming methods. The transition to sustainable agriculture is not without cost, and supporting countries and communities as they make this transition is critical to long-term sustainability. For example, payments for ecosystem services, including carbon credits, are worth exploring and implementing.
As it stands, food programs only receive about 0.8 percent of climate finance, which averages out to $28.5 billion a year. This is a far cry from the estimated $212 billion needed annually to reduce the environmental impact of food systems, which currently account for one-third of all global greenhouse gas emissions. Increased funding for food programs represents a major opportunity to put the world back on track to meet climate goals.
The need for funding goes beyond climate goals. There is also a need for increased funding for biodiversity to fully implement the Global Biodiversity Framework and to be pollution neutral. At the same time, these seemingly competing funding needs can be combined to make better use of resources to make progress across the board. Reducing and eliminating harmful subsidies and mobilizing financial resources to promote biodiversity and ecosystem benefits, both targets under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, are critical to deliver on all three Rio Summits.
Finally, harmonization policy can help address this by improving the use of resources such as finance. Improving policy coherence across climate change and mitigation can help maximize impacts and reduce trade-offs.
For example, there are currently different national-level policy frameworks for reducing pollution and protecting biodiversity: Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs). Although both acknowledge the connection between climate and biodiversity, their use has been differentiated and differentiated. This means we miss out on the “double win”, efforts that often duplicate and undermine sustainability goals.
Bringing together the three Rio Conferences on biodiversity, desertification, and climate is important. Although they are separate entities, they cannot work in isolation, especially in relation to food systems, because they are deeply interconnected.
This includes improved communication to reduce competition for resources such as finance and manufacturing costs, while improving systems thinking.
Food systems offer an opportunity for fair and equitable climate action, while at the same time vulnerable and powerful when it comes to the impacts of climate change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation. Given that next year will be one year of the COP, attention should return to the possibilities of food systems to reduce pollution and improve the diversity of the environment and the benefit of the ecosystem, at the same time as supporting the right transition to ensure that we not only support the planet, but. all mankind too.
Aditi MukherjeeCGIAR’s Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Impact Action Platform and IPCC author
Cargele MassoDirector of the CGIAR Impact Platform on Environmental Health and Biodiversity
IPS UN Bureau
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
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