Agriculture & COP27

Agriculture, food, and land use is the largest source of GHG emissions (25%), affecting all planetary boundaries and all Sustainable Development Goals.

According to the Food and Land Use Coalition:

• ~2 billion ha of agricultural land is degraded
• 62% of IUCN globally threatened species are adversely affected by agriculture
• Our systems waste a third of food, resulting in 8% of global emissions
• ~80% of large marine ecosystems are subject to significant eutrophication
• +500 million farmers & fishers are in poverty
• 820 million people are hungry every day
• 2 billion people are overweight or obese
• 43% of agricultural workforce are women
• Agriculture accounts for 70% of freshwater withdrawals

What COP27 means for the sector

This COP 27 will occur against a backdrop of a full-blown food, energy, and biodiversity crisis. Over-reliance on fossil fuel intensive agriculture and synthetic fertilizers has led to a depletion of soil and natural resources, increased dependence on foreign supplies, and put millions of lives at risk.

COP 27 is an opportunity to begin the pivot to regenerative agriculture, under a whole food systems approach, that can bring multiple benefits for climate, health, resilience, biodiversity, and social justice. Innovative finance has a large role to play in this — we need to see a 10-fold increase in climate finance to transform agriculture and food systems for food and economic security by 2030.

COP 27 is also an opportunity to reset our relationship to nature. Nature Based Solutions, including regenerative agriculture, have a central role in countries’ NDCs and national adaptation plans. Regenerative agriculture and NbS have a critical role to play in food and agricultural systems, able to sequester 10GT CO2eq per year, make land use net zero by 2030, and a 10GT CO2eq carbon sink by 2030, with benefits for biodiversity and livelihoods.

What’s at stake?

Without commensurate climate finance and innovation for the sector, we will not have the technical or financial means to close the triple gap of producing more food, with less emissions, on the same amount of land. According to the WRI, there is a gap of 56% between the amount of food available today and that required by 2050.

The impact of not doing so is already devastating biodiversity, and will devastate vulnerable communities first. Lack of adequate food is the first and most sensitive climate impact in front line communities. Developing countries will not be able to cope with the humanitarian and fiscal impacts of not acting.

A business-as-usual scenario will continue to deplete nature and generate huge externalities. FAO estimates that at current rate we only have about 60 harvests left.

Asks for NSAs

• Adopt the Agriculture Breakthrough priority actions for 2023: RD&D, more climate finance, policy coordination with FAST initiative and AIM4C, metrics, and institutional home for AB
• NSA’s support the Earthshot action agenda for agricultural innovation
• Enhance food systems in NDCs, and raise the profile of whole food systems in national accounting and climate plans by COP28
• Fund and implement more innovation sprints in AIM4C
• Dedicated focus to bring more climate and carbon finance to smallholder farmers in vulnerable regions through High Yielding Adaptive and Resilient Practices, and adapted, de-risked blended finance
• UNFCCC and FAO heed the call by investors representing $17.5 trillion in combined assets to produce a Global Roadmap to 1.5˚C, Nature and Nutrition Security Goals
• Corporations increase adoption of new SBTI FLAG guidance (and ideally also adopt additional measures for biodiversity and AMR)
• Support and fund global pledges in the sector, like global methane pledge, or the FLW pledge launched by Rabobank