
NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 24 (IPS) – This yr has been a landmark one for local weather and atmosphere coverage. Beginning with the UN’s COP16 biodiversity talks in October, adopted by the COP29 local weather talks in November, and shutting with the desertification COP16 in December, few years have provided such vital moments back-to-back.
This created an unprecedented alternative to bolster meals methods in opposition to local weather change, enhance their environmental impacts, and concretize help for smallholder farmers – among the individuals most affected by local weather change, land degradation, and biodiversity loss.
Throughout the summits, negotiators broadly agreed on the necessity to combine meals methods into the UN’s three environmental frameworks, a step in the appropriate course given the interconnectedness of meals and agriculture, and the atmosphere at giant. Nonetheless, to construct on the flagship UAE Declaration on meals methods on the COP28 local weather talks in 2023, the worldwide group should urgently ramp up financing and motion to make good on the bold objectives set.
In different phrases, the following 12 months to the COP30 local weather talks in Brazil are vital for “strolling the discuss” of the COPs this yr. To profit from the chance for meals methods to help environmental and local weather objectives, a number of steps are wanted.
The primary is elevated funding into low-emissions applied sciences and improvements for meals methods. This consists of each funding into new and rising options in addition to financing for scaling up current applied sciences.
Simply as elevated funding and help in latest a long time led to a photo voltaic vitality increase, inflicting the worth of photo voltaic panels to fall sharply and have become cheaper than fossil fuels, meals methods want related long-term and sustained investments. Channelling worldwide finance in direction of agricultural analysis and improvement would speed up and scale reasonably priced, impactful, and clear applied sciences that curb emissions and improve biodiversity whereas additionally supporting adaptation and rural livelihoods.
Inexperienced ammonia, for example, is a promising new sector for meals and agriculture. It reduces emissions from fertiliser manufacturing by utilising renewable vitality sources, comparable to wind or solar energy, to gas the standard Haber–Bosch course of. However at current, inexperienced ammonia is dearer than its fossil fuel-based different, and requires extra analysis to realize cost-effective manufacturing within the years to come back.
Second, finance is urgently wanted to cowl the prices and potential short-term losses as farmers undertake low-emission, regenerative agricultural practices. The transition to sustainable agriculture isn’t with out prices, and supporting nations and communities as they make this shift is important to long-term implementation. For instance, fee for ecosystem companies, together with carbon credit, is value exploring and implementing.
Because it stands, meals methods obtain solely round 0.8 per cent of local weather finance, totalling $28.5 billion common yearly. That is removed from the estimated $212 billion wanted yearly to scale back meals methods’ environmental footprint, which presently account for one third of all international greenhouse fuel emissions. Elevated finance in meals methods represents an enormous alternative to deliver the world again on monitor to succeed in local weather targets.
The necessity for finance goes past simply local weather objectives. There’s additionally a necessity for elevated finance for biodiversity to completely implement the World Biodiversity Framework and land degradation neutrality. On the identical time, these seemingly competing finance wants could be coordinated to make finest use of sources to make progress throughout the board. Lowering and phasing out dangerous subsidies and mobilizing monetary sources to boost biodiversity and ecosystem good points, each targets underneath the Kunming-Montreal World Biodiversity Framework, are paramount to ship on all three Rio Conventions.
Lastly, harmonizing coverage will help deal with this by optimizing the usage of sources like finance. Enhancing coverage coherence throughout local weather adaptation and mitigation will help maximize impacts and cut back trade-offs.
As an illustration, there are presently totally different country-level coverage frameworks to scale back emissions and defend biodiversity: Nationally Decided Contributions (NDCs) and Nationwide Biodiversity Methods and Motion Plans (NBSAPs). Whereas each acknowledge the interconnectedness between local weather and biodiversity, their implementation has been fragmented and siloed. This implies we’re lacking out on the “double-wins”, extra typically duplicating efforts and even undermining sustainability objectives.
Integrating the three Rio Conventions on biodiversity, desertification, and local weather is prime. Although they’re separate frameworks, they can not function in siloes, particularly concerning meals methods, as a result of they’re deeply interconnected.
This consists of improved coordination to reduce competitors for sources like finance and transaction prices, whereas enhancing methods considering.
Meals methods provide a possibility for simply and honest local weather motion, concurrently susceptible and highly effective with regards to the impacts of local weather change, biodiversity loss, and land degradation. On condition that subsequent yr will likely be a single-COP yr, consideration should return to the alternatives for meals methods to scale back emissions and improve biodiversity and ecosystem good points, similtaneously supporting a simply transition to make sure we maintain not solely the planet, however all humanity too.
Aditi Mukherji, CGIAR’s Local weather Change Adaptation and Mitigation Influence Motion Platform and IPCC writer
Cargele Masso, Director of the CGIAR Influence Platform on Environmental Well being and Biodiversity
IPS UN Bureau
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