This is the first part of an articles series based on based on conversations held during COP16 (Cali) and COP29 (Baku) side events by leading food system actors, who explored solutions provided by agroecology. Learn why this fall is crucial for food systems governance as world leaders and food system actors gather to discuss solutions to biodiversity loss, climate change and land degradation.
Protecting biodiversity, mitigating and adapting to climate change, and ensuring universal access to healthy, sustainable food are highly interconnected challenges that can benefit from similar solutions and approaches.
The international biodiversity and climate agendas—and country-level National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs) and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)—should be better aligned. And efforts to make food systems more nature positive, including through agroecology, must be integral to each.
This was the topic of a recent event, “Harvesting Solutions: Aligning NBSAPs and NDCs for Climate and Biodiversity Benefits,” held on the sidelines of COP16 in Cali.
The way we produce, distribute, consume and dispose of food represents the “number one threat to people and to nature,” argued Joao Campari, Global Lead of WWF’s International, Food Practice.
Food systems generate US$20 trillion of social, human and environmental costs per year, dwarfing their US$9 trillion market value. According to the WWF’s latest Living Planet report, they generate one-third of greenhouse gas emissions, are responsible for 90 percent of deforestation and 70 percent of freshwater biodiversity loss, and are the main driver behind a 86 percent decline in wildlife populations in the 50 years to 2020. And while 10 percent of people go hungry, 40 percent of all food is lost or wasted.
Industrial food systems have trapped us in a “destructive loop,” driving environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, and climate disasters, agreed Haseeb Bakhtary, Lead Consultant at Climate Focus. But by transitioning towards nature-positive, inclusive, well-governed food systems, we can regenerate ecosystems, reduce food loss and waste, and deliver sustainable, healthy diets for everyone.
As shown by WWF studies, a holistic approach to food systems is so far largely missing in countries’ NDCs and NBSAPs.
Although 97 percent of the 64 countries that had submitted NBSAPs by the end of September 2024 included at least one measure related to food system transformation, food loss and issues around farmer organizations and land tenure were barely addressed, according to a new study from WWF and Climate Focus.
A similar picture emerges for the NDCs, according to another recent report that analyzes 167 NDCs based on their inclusion of seven categories of innovation in agriculture and food systems. While 90 percent included at least one key word related to agriculture and food systems, only 12 percent of countries included key words related to all seven categories.
With three COPs (Climate, Biodiversity and Desertification) in one year, 2024 offers an opportunity to better align the Rio Conventions.
But to anchor progress at the multilateral level in national policymaking, agriculture ministers also need tools to help them persuade counterparts in foreign affairs and environment ministries—where NDCs are typically penned—of the importance of addressing food systems and biodiversity within climate mitigation strategies, argued Lasse Bruun, Director of Climate and Food at the UN Foundation.
Moritz Fegert, Project Officer at Biovision Foundation, recommended greater intersectoral dialogue. In May 2024, an exchange Biovision hosted in Nairobi with representatives from agriculture and environment ministries from the Global South succeeded in getting siloed agri-food and biodiversity focal points to explore policy synergies as part of the revision of their respective NBSAPs.
Agroecology offers a powerful pathway towards achieving biodiversity, climate, and food security goals simultaneously.
Reducing the use of harmful and synthetic inputs and fostering farmer-led seed systems offer good entry points for countries to introduce ecological and agroecological practices, proposed Fegert.
Developing national agroecology strategies can also help governments gain a platform for rolling out coherent and scalable interventions that also support their biodiversity and climate action. Kenya, for example, is set to approve a National Agroecology Strategy, which includes interventions that could also be inserted in its NDC.
To help governments in this process, WWF, Biovision, the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, the Agroecology Coalition, and the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT launched at COP16 a Guidance Tool that maps out 14 agroecological intervention areas.
Inadequate financial support for food system transformation is impeding efforts to scale up approaches like agroecology.
But money is available. For example, Anna Lappé, Executive Director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, called for the US$7 trillion of subsidies aimed at monoculture commodity crops and harmful agri-food practices to be redirected towards nature-positive food systems and produce.
Agroecology could enable governments to combine selected NBSAP and NDC goals into joint, rather than semi-duplicated, interventions, thereby generating cost savings for environment and agriculture ministries and helping persuade finance ministries to fund them, argued Fegert.
With their wealth of traditional knowledge and long history of guarding the planet, Indigenous people and local communities have much to teach about addressing the interconnected problems of climate change, biodiversity loss and food insecurity, argued Ceiça Pitagruary, Secretary for Indigenous Environmental and Territorial Management at the Brazilian Ministry of Indigenous Peoples.
They and other local communities must be actively engaged during the drafting and implementation of NDCs and NBSAPs, with equity and human rights central to any solution.
Multi-stakeholder collaboration is key to tackling interconnected challenges around climate, biodiversity and food, agreed Deissy Martinez-Baron, Regional Programme Leader for Alliance Bioversity & CIAT. Success will depend on “the partnerships that we are building today, the knowledge that we share, and the coordinated action that we take,” she concluded.
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