Food and climate at COP30: 5 things to watch in Belém

Thousands of negotiators, activists, scientists, and heads of state are gathering in Belém — the gateway to the Amazon River in northern Brazil — for the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, which officially kicks off Monday. It’s the first time a climate COP has been held in the Amazon, and its location carries both practical and symbolic weight. Brazil is a global agricultural powerhouse and home to the world’s largest tropical forest; how leaders balance food, forests, and climate will set the tone for negotiations. “It’s important that this meeting is in Brazil … because first of all, Brazil is a very big agriculture country,” Sandra Milach, chief scientist at CGIAR and a native of Brazil, told Devex. That makes the stakes particularly high: “Agriculture is sometimes pointed out as one of the problems,” she said — from livestock emissions to methane from rice paddies. “But we need agriculture to become the solution … if we do this right, agriculture can serve as a very important solution.” Though official negotiations on topics including indicators to measure climate adaptation and mitigation strategies get underway next week, the tone will be set during the high-level leaders’ summit, which starts tomorrow. Food and agriculture advocates say they’ll be watching closely to see whether heads of state elevate issues such as hunger, agriculture resilience, or food-related greenhouse gas emissions in their opening remarks. “Does President Lula talk about hunger and food and the links between food and climate, or does he focus on the TFFF?” Ed Davey, head of the World Resource Institute Europe’s U.K. office asked of Brazil’s Tropical Forests Forever Facility, a new fund designed to financially reward countries that keep their forests standing. “What do other world leaders say? Does it feature on the optics?” Declarations on fertilizer, food, and climate are expected in the coming days — but how prominent they are in the earlier leaders’ conversations will be the first real test of political will, he told Devex. So, what are the biggest issues the food systems community will be watching? Here are five. 1. Mitigation vs. adaptation: Will financing shift? The long-running tension between mitigation — cutting greenhouse gas emissions — and adaptation — helping communities survive climate impacts — will resurface in Belém. Agriculture sits at the center of both debates. It drives about one-third of global emissions but is also the world’s largest employer. But this foundation of rural economies is now under threat from drought, heat, and flooding. Historically, only a small fraction of climate finance has flowed to adaptation. For Alvaro Llario, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, COP30 must change that equation. The priority, he said, is “to shift … the perception of investment in adaptation as being only a sunk cost and more of being an economic opportunity.” Adaptation, he argued, increases food production, farmer income, and rural jobs — all economic returns. IFAD will use COP30 to push that narrative and make the business case that adaptation isn’t charity; it’s a growth strategy. 2. The Baku-to-Belém road map: Who pays for all this? Climate finance looms over every discussion. At COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, countries agreed to a new collective quantified goal, or NCQG, of $300 billion in annual financing for lower-income states on the front lines of climate change, but many called it “paltry” compared to the more than $1 trillion needed annually. As a compromise, countries agreed to develop a pathway — the Baku-to-Belém road map — to scale finance to $1.3 trillion per year by 2035 from both public and private sources. This road map has not yet been published — though it is expected imminently — and its treatment of agriculture and food systems will be closely watched. Will it include mechanisms for channeling finance to smallholder farmers? Nature-based solutions? Methane reduction in livestock or rice systems? Hints are emerging. Last month, a first-of-its-kind report from the Circle of Finance Ministers, a group of global finance ministers led by Brazil and tasked with finding ways to scale up climate finance, laid out recommendations including: • Scaling up concessional finance and reforming multilateral development banks • Boosting domestic capacity and creating country platforms • Developing financial tools to attract private capital • Strengthening regulations for climate investment The report explicitly highlights agriculture, forestry, and other land use, noting these sectors account for 22% of emissions but receive far too little finance. The U.N. Environment Programme estimates nature-based solutions require more than $400 billion annually by 2030 — double current levels. But money will only flow if investors see a return, Llario warned. “The instruments … cannot be just about advocacy … we also need to make sure we are meeting the needs of private investors. … Advocacy, per se, is not going to bring the hundreds of billions or trillions that we need.” 3. Food in NDCs: Will countries deliver? Countries are generally expected to still submit updated nationally determined contributions — their five-year climate action plans — ahead of COP30. After the majority of countries signed the landmark COP28 UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action, expectations are high that food systems will be included across national targets. But progress is uneven. As of now, only 69 countries have submitted. Some high emitters, such as the United Arab Emirates, explicitly include agricultural emissions in their plans — it has a 39% reduction target for the sector by 2035. Others, such as Botswana, focus heavily on adaptation rather than mitigation, which reflects their low emissions profile. “It will be very good to see what the countries say about food and food systems in their NDCs,” said Davey. “We’ll be looking through all the NDCs … and taking stock of how many … really look at food and food systems.” Llario added that these plans cannot sit in silos. “We also need to make sure that the NBSAPs, the NDCs, the NAPs … are all talking to each other.” National biodiversity strategy and action plans, or NBSAPs, are a nation’s strategic plans to protect its biodiversity, while national adaptation plans, NAPs, lay out a country’s strategy for adapting to the impacts of climate change. 4. Forests and the Tropical Forests Forever Facility Hosting COP30 in the Amazon makes forests impossible to ignore — and Brazil is expected to launch one of the most closely-watched initiatives of the summit: the Tropical Forests Forever Facility. The model is unusual. Around $25 billion in grant funding and $100 billion from capital markets would be pooled in a World Bank-managed fund and invested with expectations that it would generate around 8% returns annually. Those returns would then reward investors, repay donors, and pay countries for keeping forests standing — roughly $4 per hectare — with penalties for deforestation elsewhere and 20% of funds directed to Indigenous peoples. The tension is clear: How will forest protection be balanced with the need to increase the world’s food production to meet a growing population and protect agricultural livelihoods? CGIAR’s Milach said science must help governments “zoom in” to farmer needs while also “zooming out” to manage landscapes holistically — protecting biodiversity, water systems, and food production together. “We’re collecting evidence on these things to understand what food systems should look like in these different landscapes and how we actually manage this holistically so that we can preserve the biodiversity and water systems in those landscapes and make them sustainable.” Llario offered an example from a recent visit to Mexico, where avocado farming is lucrative and encouraged some people, looking for more income, to deforest land in order to cultivate more plants. IFAD is supporting alternatives — such as sustainable pine resin harvesting — so communities can continue living where they are in the forest while not losing income to agricultural expansion. “Communities would love, obviously, to continue living where they are in the forest, being able to maintain a lot of the trees that are there. They have been there for generations. At the same time, that needs to be balanced out with, I would say, the much quicker economic return that, for example, an avocado plantation can provide to many of them,” Llario said. 5. Declarations on food, fertilizers, and land Finally, COP30 is expected to generate a wave of political declarations and initiatives on hunger, agriculture, fertilizers, and land restoration — but what many in the food systems community want to know is whether any of these will come with measurable commitments, financing plans, or timelines for delivery. The biggest is the Belém Declaration on Hunger, Poverty, and Human-Centered Climate Action. It builds on the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, launched by Brazil when it held the rotating Group of 20 presidency last year. The declaration includes seven goals: • Expanding social protection — especially in high-poverty, high-climate-risk countries — by at least 2 percentage points annually • Making social protection systems “climate-ready” • Mobilizing climate finance to strengthen national social protection • Dramatically increasing climate finance to reach smallholder farmers and food producers directly • Supporting sustainable jobs in forested and fragile ecosystems • Embedding social protection, resilient food systems, and just transitions into NDCs and national plans • Increasing investment in research and evidence for human-centered climate action Other initiatives to watch include two proposals where the broad ambition is clear but the details are still to come — likely during COP30: • Fertilizers: Brazil and the U.K. have recently strengthened their partnership on sustainable fertilizers, focused on low-carbon and bio-based fertilizers, soil health, and more resilient supply chains. Experts are watching COP30 for possible deepening of cooperation on this topic. • RAIZ: The Resilient Agriculture Investment for net Zero land degradation initiative aims to create financial tools to restore up to 250 million hectares of degraded land by 2030. It would map degraded areas, attract investment, support project development, and contribute to the U.N. goal of restoring 250 million hectares of farmland by 2030. For both, what matters now is what form they take in Belém — whether they come with timelines, funding mechanisms, or measurable outcomes, or remain broad political statements.