At the climate summit in Dubai today, 134 countries pledged that food will be part of their climate plans by 2025. The signatories also include the countries and regions with the highest food-related emissions, such as Brazil, China, the United States and the European Union.
Worldwide, approximately one third of the CO comes from2emissions borne by farmers and other food producers. In the Netherlands this amounts to approximately 14 percent, of which 70 percent is due to livestock farming. Staying below 1.5 degrees of warming and feeding the world is therefore virtually impossible without reducing emissions from farmers, producers, food transport, packaging, etc.
It is the first time that this realization has been included in a statement during the United Nations climate negotiations. The 134 countries that signed this agreement together account for 70 percent of the land surface on earth.
Climate change threatens the resilience of agriculture and food systems. Think of lost harvests due to floods or heat waves. It also reduces the chances of the most vulnerable people in particular to produce food and to obtain food, the participants acknowledged in their statement on Friday afternoon.
“Global food systems are broken,” said UN Secretary General Anónio Guterres in July yet. “And billions of people are paying the price.” About 800 million people, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, are hungry. Increasing deforestation, drought, drinking water shortages and natural disasters are increasingly endangering food security. Yet the food system was always subordinate in the climate negotiations.
Cattle breeding
There has long been agreement that a shift from animal to plant-based food production is necessary to reduce emissions and feed almost 10 billion people by 2050. Livestock farming, especially cattle, has a large footprint: three-quarters of all agricultural land on earth is used for livestock: for the animals themselves and for growing animal feed. Livestock is also a major source of methane emissions.
Less livestock is one necessity. Combating waste is also part of the solution. A third of all food produced is now lost between farm and table.
Participating countries also agree to protect farmers, fishermen and other food products from the effects of climate change. Countries must prepare for inevitable consequences of climate change with, for example, better infrastructure and technological innovations such as warning systems that detect natural disasters at an early stage. All this to protect and restore both food and nature.
It is not only water, soils and biodiversity that seem to be receiving more attention. People must also be protected, with special attention to women, children, indigenous peoples, small farmers and agricultural workers. Here is the increasingly loud voice of the Southern Hemisphere, where the blows of climate change are hitting hardest.
It is up to individual countries to integrate agriculture and food into their climate plans. Measurable goals, such as the amount of CO to be reduced2– or methane emissions, are not stated in this statement. There will also be no fund to help countries achieve the goals. This first statement is mainly intended to get countries to adjust their policies. The next climate summit will look at what has been achieved and what is still needed to achieve the joint climate goals by 2030.