At COP 28, countries pledged to transform their food systems. Now what?

By the time the closing gavel fell at the COP 28 climate conference in December, agri-food systems had assumed a new place of prominence in global climate discussions. A total of 159 countries signed on to a declaration vowing to prioritize food systems in their national climate plans by COP 30 in 2025, marking the first resolution at a climate COP to recognize how deeply entwined the sectors really are. Experts agree that the declaration, and the impressive number of signatories, is a crucial step toward meeting climate targets. But how will they get there? While the declaration offers the rough contours of what countries need to do — integrate food systems into national climate strategies; scale up finance; strengthen water management in agriculture; and more — guidance for actual implementation is vague. This is partially by design, as each country’s path will vary depending on its specific circumstances. But actually achieving the declaration’s directives will take a great deal of buy-in on both national and local levels — a tall order given the delicate, often fiery, politics surrounding climate action and the nonbinding nature of the declaration itself. “The inescapable fact is that the policy changes that need to happen to support these kinds of transformations — they’re major domestic agendas in countries around the world. You want to transform agriculture? That’s a domestic agenda. That’s a very political domestic agenda,” said Purnima Menon, the senior director for food and nutrition at the agricultural research consortium CGIAR and the International Food Policy Research Institute. “The challenge is to figure out how to connect what’s widely accepted as an area of investment that’s needed and is very visible from a global perspective, to what really needs to happen on the ground.” Centering food systems in climate It’s clear why this transformation is so critical to achieving global climate goals: Agri-food systems drive a third of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, with the largest percentage coming from agriculture and land use. The declaration — formally titled “The UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action” — is significant for its acknowledgment of food’s outsized role in climate change, and vice versa. But it also successfully captures the full range of what countries need to do — from scaling up resilience and adaptation to supporting workers — to adequately center food in national climate discussions, said Menon. “I think from the perspective of shaping an effective discourse, the UAE declaration is very powerful,” said Menon, who co-authored a recent analysis of the food-related commitment statements that come out of global meetings including COP 28. COP 28 also saw the creation of a spate of initiatives to unite governments and international organizations to help countries deliver on the declaration’s promises. Among them is the National Food Systems Technical Cooperation, to which the United Arab Emirates, as COP 28 president, committed $200 million in support. The U.K. is also set to add £45 million (about $57.1 million) over the next five years, and Italy will contribute €10 million (about $10.8 million) over the next two years. But more than two months after the ink on those signatures dried, the declaration’s impacts remain mostly intangible. Ed Davey, senior adviser for the Food and Land Use Coalition at the World Resources Institute, said that while the declaration represents “a wonderful opportunity to build on and deliver on what was achieved by the UAE presidency,” the fact remains that it’s a nonbinding commitment, with nothing by way of accountability built in. “We can’t keep on making commitments,” Davey said. “We’ve actually got to deliver real-world change.” A challenging backdrop Governments are in the difficult position of enacting their commitments in a highly charged political environment. As Menon said: “If you’re trying to set up food or climate policy right now, in any country, I don’t envy you.” Farmers across Europe are protesting environmental regulations they say are unfairly burdensome, while farmers in India have taken to the streets demanding policy overhauls and guaranteed prices for their produce. Farmers are always a crucial constituency for governments, but 2024 also happens to be a historic election year, with more than 2 billion voters heading to the polls across 50 countries. Scenes of farmers blocking highways from New Delhi to Warsaw are a potent visual reminder to governments: tread carefully. From the perspective of policymakers, “it doesn’t matter how much political will I have,” said Menon. “There are constituencies that can bring my world to its knees.” Others think the declaration’s promises could be a lot of hot air — or, as Emile Frison, a member and founder of the IPES-Food panel, put it: Old wine in new bottles. “Every time there’s an initiative like that, you see a lot of pledges being made. But this, in many cases, is not new money — it’s a relabeling,” he said. “So it still remains to be seen what will actually happen. Because indeed, not much has happened.” Who is doing what? Despite the headwinds, there are examples of governments forging ahead on their commitments. Brazil, which is set to host the Group of 20 major economies’ summit later this year and COP 30 in 2025, has been a leader in driving nations to formulate their climate action plans, called nationally determined contributions, or NDCs, with food systems at the fore. The EU, also, is poised to increase its member states’ ambitions on agriculture, as well as food and land use emissions. At the G20, Davey would like to see enhanced NDC commitments and increased climate finance for food systems overhaul, with more funds going directly to frontline communities and smallholder farmers. But as much as the declaration is about money, it’s also about political will. “There are still $700 billion in agricultural subsidies in the world,” Davey said. “Repurposing policies and investments in regulatory environments to deliver the transition in the declaration is actually a much bigger prize, because of the sheer scale of public finance we provide for food systems around the world.” Possibilities for unlocking grants and concessional finance include repurposing special drawing rights, reforming the multilateral development banks, and country plans that shift away from harmful subsidies toward more sustainable practices. Frison said he is encouraged by entities like the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the Green Climate Fund supporting agro-ecological transformations, which was not the case just two years ago. “There is an opportunity,” he said. “There are indications that at least a number of countries have clearly seen the limits of the current dominant model and want to see changes.” Nonstate players, with their greater leeway for advocacy than governments, also have a crucial role to play in moving policy forward. Alongside the leaders’ declaration, a coalition of at least 150 frontline food systems groups — including businesses, civil society groups, and philanthropies — signed a “nonstate actors’ call to action” that included a commitment to sharing their own “statements of action.” “It’s not all about governments,” Davey said. “There’s a lot that the whole of society can do. And if the whole society moves, then governments will follow.” A little less conversation It’s clear coming out of COP 28 that food systems and agriculture are increasingly integral to climate conversations. But there is a risk that nonbinding commitments, like the UAE declaration, may create the illusion of action without actual progress. For Frison, too much emphasis is still being put on a system that’s “no longer fit for purpose.” The COVID-19 pandemic, followed by the war in Ukraine, has laid bare the vulnerability of our globalized food systems, he said, adding that “the substantial funding that is needed to allow that kind of transformation to happen is still slow to come.” As global leaders jet from conference to conference, the reality is that people are still going hungry, Menon said. “I do worry about the proliferation of talking opportunities and commitment-making opportunities that may not translate to commitments,” she said. “At the end of the day, it is going to be the poorest that continue to suffer while the rest of us have the luxury of flying around and talking about it.”