Food finally made it to the COP.
But leaders stopped short of recommending the systemic change we need.
Recent headlines were dominated by frantic discussions at COP27 in Egypt to garner a deal on a ‘loss and damage’ fund to counter the effects of climate change on the poorer countries of the world.
In the end, a deal was reached, however imperfect, that hopefully will see richer countries help their poorer brothers and sisters in building a better, more resilient future through infrastructure that is more resistant to the ravages of our newly unstable climate.
The other bright spot of the COP27 was a bold announcement on the part of the new President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to stop deforestation and to restore forest to portions of the Amazon basin. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, so we’ll see if this is carried out.
Other than those two outcomes, the rest of the meeting generated a lot of frustration on the part of scientists and others concerned with the direction we’re going in our activities to warm the planet. The goal of limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5C seems to be harder to attain; some odds-makers are putting this at a fifty-fifty chance we’ll be successful. Why? The reluctance on the part of some key nations (India, Canada, Russia) to make commitments to phase out fossil fuel exploitation and consumption. Adding insult to injury were the dramatically increased presence of fossil fuel lobbyists, whose participation at this COP were up some 25% by some estimates (to a total of 636 individuals, according to the BBC), compared to the previous COP meeting.
This we all know and was fairly well covered in the media.
But one critical issue that was simply ignored by the media was the inclusion of food systems in the conversation. This particular COP was supposed to have food at its core, with numerous pavilions dedicated to food. Four pavilions — including the Food Systems Pavilion, the Food4Climate pavilion and the Food and Agriculture Pavilion and a full day dedicated to discussing our global food system — brought together experts, farmers, community organizations and advocates from a wide spectrum of organizations to discuss the systems that produce the food we eat, and how they could be reformed to be kinder to the environment.
So what did the thousands of people attending COP27 actually decide on our food systems?
Well, there were a lot of pronouncements made. For example, the final Implementation Plan document that was produced at the end of the conference had the following:
- One line related to Agriculture, which welcomed the establishment of a four-year workplan on agriculture and food security;
- There was a mention that nations ought to consider actions around preservation of ocean habitats as part of their actions related to climate change mitigation;
- There was also a reminder that nations should collectively aim to slow, halt and reverse forest cover and carbon loss, in line with the objectives established in COP16 and COP19; and
- The importance of protecting, conserving and restoring water and water-related ecosystems, including river basins, aquifers and lakes was emphasized as well as the importance of nations to further integrate water into adaptation efforts.
The four-year workplan referred above is intended to consider a number of actions directed specifically at our agricultural systems. Here are a few of the key recommendations:
- certain mitigation ideas that had already been identified in previous meetings were reiterated and the COP encouraged nations to scale up those efforts;
- the importance of scientific and technical knowledge that should be transferred to the agriculture players to contribute to climate mitigation of the sector was recognized;
- soil health, soil carbon and soil fertility — as well as sustainable integrated soil and water management — were recognized as being context specific (meaning, nation, or sub-nation specific) and should be dealt with in a holistic and inclusive manner to realize the full potential of increased productivity in contributing to food security, adaptation and adaptation co-benefits as well as enhancing carbon sinks;
- that soil and nutrient management practices and the optimal use of nutrients, including organic fertilizer and enhanced manure management, lie at the core of climate-resilient, sustainable food production systems and can contribute to global food security;
- that sustainably managed livestock systems have high adaptive capacity and resilience to climate change while playing broad roles in safeguarding food and nutrition security, livelihoods, sustainability, nutrient cycling and carbon management;
- that socioeconomic and food security dimensions are critical when dealing with climate change in agriculture and food systems;
- safeguarding food security and ending hunger by designing sustainable and climate-resilient agricultural systems;
- the importance of considering sustainable land and water management for agriculture in a systemic and integrated manner; and
- that implementing sustainable approaches can render multiple benefits for society, such as improved water quality, higher biodiversity and increased soil organic matter.
The draft report also emphasized the urgent need to scale up action and support with regard to capacity building, access to finance, and technology development.
Further, the decision also requested the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice and the Subsidiary Body for Implementation to establish the four-year Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on implementation of climate action on agriculture and food security. This will try to yoke together work being done in other areas, notably Finance, Tech transfer, and the multiple Funds that have been established for low-income countries and for climate change mitigation, in order to ensure that the work on agriculture and food systems be given greater prominence and is applied in a consistent manner.
It’s a lot of bureaucratize that, when you read it, doesn’t communicate confidence that something will actually get done. The recommendations are non-binding and dependent on a lot of future work that needs to be accomplished by nation states.
As you can see from the verbs I’ve italicized, the way the COP works is designed to not impose specific actions on nation-states, but rather, strongly emphasize, remind and consider. They also use the verbs ‘urge’ and ‘stress’ but they don’t go beyond that.
And despite all the discussions in those pavilions on how to reform our food system to be better for our environment, more equal in how food is distributed across the globe — and within communities — and to be better at recuperating the food wasted in our current food systems, the COP is only looking at our food system from the supply side, i.e., at the farm level. It has completely ignored the demand side of the equation, which addresses questions related to overall food waste and loss, sustainable diets and resilient supply chains. Without the two coming together, what the COP has asked nations to work on only addresses a part of the problem with our food systems.
The other elephant in the room was the high participation rate of agri-business. Global companies like JBS sent small armies of lobbyists to the event to ensure that their industrial methods of growing food and producing protein remained at the forefront. Lost in the shuffle were small lot farmers, who represent over 70% of food production around the world and who face the brunt of climate change. They were demanding progress on issues related to agroecology and other more sustainable farming methods. Based on what is contained in the COP27 documents reviewed above, there is not much there for the small lot farmers to rejoice about.
That being said, its the large agri-businesses that have the most work to clean up their environmental act. They’ve started to make bold statements to convert the source of their staple food products from farms practicing industrialised methods of farming to farms that practice regenerative agriculture. McCain Foods, for example, has put in place a regenerative farm framework, where they commit to sourcing all of their potatoes from farms that practice regenerative methods.
Sub-national governments in Canada are also taking action, in line with the objectives of either greater food sovereignty — through reducing long supply chains or growing more of what consumers need closer to home — or more resilience in our farms. The BC government, likely in reaction to the floods that submerged about 78,000 hectares of prime agricultural land in November, 2021, has formed a task force with the aim of providing farmers with the latest technology, create more resilient farms and increase sustainability. This task force is designed to feed information into another body struck by the Province — the Regenerative Agriculture and Agritech Network — to stimulate additional innovation and change in the province’s agricultural sector.
So, while COP has gone farther than it has in the past, and put food into the debate around Climate Change, much of what is being contemplated at the UN level may already be eclipsed by independent actions on the ground, driven by necessity and good stewardship. Where the actions being pushed from above meet the actions being developed on the ground will generate the most excitement and controversy, as one is not necessarily informing the other.
Time will tell if what the COP has started will resonate with actual actions at the farm and food system level. Until then, just talking about it is a good thing and hopefully that will be enough to incent more governments to get their farms modernized and ready for our new, climate-changed age.
