Can FAO's road map to transform agrifood systems meet its climate goals?

It was never going to be an easy task to design a plan for an agrifood system that can end hunger worldwide while keeping global warming below the target of 1.5 degrees Celsius laid out in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Last year, during the COP 28 United Nations climate conference in Dubai, the Food and Agriculture Organization released a preliminary road map with an aim to do just that. That report, which takes a global perspective, lays out 120 actions across 10 domains — including livestock, crops, fisheries and aquaculture, and food loss and waste — that can be taken to achieve the two goals. Called a road map “in brief,” it’s meant to be an overview of the first part of a three-year road map process, with in-depth, iterative reports to be released each year through COP 30. However, some scientists and environmental, social and governance, or ESG, investors are concerned that the in-brief road map is not as thorough as it needs to be. They worry that FAO’s calls to improve the efficiency of livestock production neglect the concerns of One Health, an approach that recognizes how humans, animals, and the environment impact each other and attempts to balance their needs. More concerning to some critics is that it didn’t include a dedicated call to reduce meat consumption in high-income countries or increase the use of alternative proteins as a way to bring down greenhouse gas emissions in the agrifood sector. With the first in-depth report expected to launch as early as next month, pressure is mounting on FAO to address these concerns and perceived gaps and provide more detail on how the 120 actions will actually deliver on the road map’s goals. The in-brief document “helped us to see the direction of travel, but our investor members as well as many others are waiting for many of those concrete pathways forward,” said Keenya Hofmaier, a senior policy officer at the FAIRR Initiative, a network that mobilizes investors attuned to the ESG risks and opportunities in the global food sector and is backed by more than $70 trillion in assets. FAO officials told Devex the timeline for the next report’s release depends on the feedback that came out of the FAO Programme Committee meetings that wrapped up last week. ‘A common language’ for agrifood systems goals It was FAIRR that made the initial call in 2022 for FAO to produce the road map. FAO “are well positioned to lead because it is a [United Nations] body with well-respected global convening power,” Hofmaier told Devex. FAIRR’s call came a year after the International Energy Agency released a plan for achieving a net-zero energy system by 2050. “It was clear that a similar pathway was needed for the food systems sector,” Hofmaier said, particularly given that agrifood systems are responsible for one-third of global anthropogenic greenhouse emissions. “None of our climate goals are going to get solved without us moving forward in that direction.” FAO set about creating a strategy not just for achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2, which aims to end global hunger by 2030, but to ensure that everybody can actually afford a nutritious diet by 2050. At the same time, the road map also sought to account for opportunities to transform the agrifood sector into a net-carbon sink. FAO decided to break down the ambitious project into three deliverables. There’s the report that is expected next month. That will be followed by a regionally focused version at this year’s COP 29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November. That second report in November is likely to focus on how the road map can apply to three regions: the Mediterranean, Oceania, and likely East Africa, David Laborde, the director of FAO’s Agrifood Economics Division, told Devex. In 2025, at COP 30 in Brazil, FAO expects to release a country-focused report with examples of how to integrate the road map at a national level. Laborde said they are currently considering featuring Brazil, Denmark, Ethiopia, Guatemala, and Indonesia, though the final list might change. Hofmaier said the final installment in 2025 should ultimately help governments in finalizing the nationally determined contributions, or NDCs, that outline their commitments to delivering on the Paris agreement. Updated NDCs are due in 2025, and having the road map “out ahead of time could signal an important example of how the agri-food transition can look at the country level,” she said. The in-brief road map that FAO released as a first step in December underscores the enormity of the task ahead. “There is no one silver bullet or even three,” Laborde said. The road map’s 120 actions include everything from improving specific fishery practices to protecting forests and wetlands. It also sets out milestones that will be achieved along the way, including a 25% reduction in methane emissions from the livestock sector by 2030 compared to 2020 and universal access to safe drinking water, also by 2030. It is meant to be comprehensive, though it is not exhaustive. The expectation is that other thinkers and players will come in and build out some of the recommendations. But the key is that it introduces “a common language, a common software, because it did not exist before,” Laborde said. Waiting for details Meanwhile, the broader agrifood community is still waiting for more evidence that this road map will actually deliver on the goals of ending hunger without breaching the 1.5 degree threshold. “It’s essential for us to be able to verify how the proposed interventions add up in terms of emissions reductions,” Cleo Verkuijl, a researcher in climate change policy at the Stockholm Environment Institute, told Devex. “But the road map doesn’t provide this information.” She is the lead author of an article in the Nature Food journal outlining numerous concerns with FAO’s road map. Hofmaier said that FAIRR investors are still looking for steps “forward for the private sector, in general, to act and to funnel investments and make decisions where they need to be made.” Meanwhile, more than a third of experts surveyed in a recent report from Harvard Law School’s Animal Law & Policy Program believe that emissions from livestock must peak in high-income countries before next year to reduce the risk of temperatures exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius. Encouraging people in these settings to eat less animal-sourced products should be a critical step toward reducing these emissions, the Harvard report argued. But while FAO’s road map currently talks about dietary shifts and “rebalancing” meat consumption, its proposed interventions pay limited attention to the need to transition away from animal-sourced products in appropriate settings. “For a road map that is meant to align food systems with internationally agreed climate limits, failing to prioritize measures that could substantially alleviate environmental pressures is clearly problematic,” Verkuijl said. This issue has become even more fraught after two researchers accused FAO of misrepresenting and misusing their findings in a report, “Pathways Towards Lower Emissions,” that was released last year. The scientists say that FAO misrepresented the potential for dietary change to reduce emissions from the food system, resulting in estimates that are between six to 40 times lower than the scientific consensus. That prompted FAIRR and others to call on FAO to respond and, if needed, correct the report and consider if any changes are needed to the road map. So far FAO has not responded. What’s ahead FAO’s Laborde is well aware of the broader critique about the lack of discussion of shifting away from meat in some settings, but said FAO’s focus was on creating a “global road map,” with regional specifications to come later. He also cautioned that “changing diets takes time. We want smaller changes every day, that’s for me how we deliver. We’re clear about the sense of urgency, but let’s not be unrealistic or too aspirational.” Still, Verkuijl pointed out that FAO was able to make regionally specific recommendations in the preliminary, in-brief road map, including around another controversial action item: The road map calls for intensified livestock production “in relevant locations.” This comes amid a broader call to improve “efficiency of production” in an effort to meet global hunger targets. FAIRR cautioned that the implications of some of these recommendations need to be explored further. Hofmaier warned that intensified production might be harmful to nature while increasing the risk of antimicrobial resistance as farmers administer more drugs to keep livestock healthy. She said that FAO has been receptive to FAIRR’s feedback, and she has been heartened by the dialogue that has been generated by the assessments of the road map. “It’s a good thing that these issues have come out in the brief report,” she said. “We are getting at the heart of the change that needs to be made.”