A recent report, Climate technologies for agrifood systems transformation, highlights the urgent need for innovative climate solutions to tackle food insecurity and the escalating impacts of climate change on global agrifood systems.
The joint report from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) explores the critical role of climate technologies in transforming global agrifood systems to enhance resilience, reduce emissions, and foster inclusivity.
“Until this report, there had been no solid analysis of where and how climate technologies can be most effective in agrifood systems,” UNFCCC steering committee member Diane Husic tells Food Tank. “The report is an important step in understanding how climate technologies can be mobilized effectively.”
According to the FAO, hunger now affects at least 800 million people worldwide, and food insecurity continues to rise. The report emphasizes that agrifood systems play a significant role in the economies of low- and middle-income countries, where the majority of the world’s poor rely on agriculture for their livelihoods. These communities are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change, despite contributing the least to global greenhouse gas emissions.
“Creating sustainable agricultural systems and food security in a changing climate and ongoing population growth is an extremely complicated challenge,” says Husic.
The UNFCCC hopes that climate technologies can address these challenges by improving agricultural productivity, promoting resilience to climate impacts, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Examples of adaptation technologies include drought-resistant crop varieties, climate-smart irrigation systems, and agroforestry practices, which help conserve water, protect soils, and improve crop yields under changing conditions.
“The subtitle of this document, Placing food security, climate change and poverty reduction at the forefront, is a critically important goal,” Husic argues. “However, when I look at the complex graphics and jargon in the report, I have trouble seeing how the details in the document can be translated to on-the-ground solutions in rural areas throughout the world.”
Ensuring that climate technology is accessible and practical requires building local capacity for maintenance, training, and scaling these technologies to reach vulnerable communities. The report calls for targeted initiatives, like Technology Needs Assessments (TNAs), to identify regional technology requirements and tailor solutions to local contexts.
“It is critical to have a thorough understanding of these various factors, their complex interactions, and the behaviors, beliefs, and cultural practices of the inhabitants to determine which climate technologies would be beneficial and appropriate for a region and effectively used and sustained by a local population,” Husic explains.
TNAs are tools for identifying which climate technologies are most suitable for particular countries, sectors, and communities. These assessments guide the development of appropriate interventions and ensure that technology solutions are aligned with local needs and challenges.
TNAs identify and rank the most critical technologies for specific sectors, such as agriculture or energy, based on their potential to address climate challenges.
The process examines barriers hindering the adoption of these technologies, such as financial constraints, technical expertise gaps, or policy limitations, and recommends enabling frameworks to overcome these challenges.
insights from TNAs culminate in Technology Action Plans (TAPs), which lay out steps to implement climate technologies, including securing financing, building infrastructure, and fostering local expertise. These plans aim to align technology adoption with broader development goals, ensuring agrifood systems are sustainable and equitable.
Husic notes that many of the world’s least developed nations receive little of the climate finance needed to deploy these innovations. “Only a small share of climate finance goes to agrifood systems,” she says.
The report calls for targeted investments to bridge this gap, focusing on technology transfer and capacity building in vulnerable regions. It also highlights the importance of public-private partnerships, gender and social inclusion, and ensuring that financial resources reach marginalized communities.
Husic stresses that while climate technologies hold promise, they are just one piece of the puzzle. “Technology, like precision agriculture, can help minimize environmental damage while increasing yields…but these will only get us so far and for so long,” Husic warns. “We need to address behavior, food waste, and the causes of climate change—along with finding ways to develop sustainability at the same time.”
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Photo courtesy of Amany Firdaus, Unsplash
