6 Major Food Breakthroughs at COP28 — and What Comes Next

Food has long been absent from UN climate summits — a major oversight given food systems’ vast interconnections with the climate.

Food and land use drive one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, food systems around the world are particularly vulnerable to droughts, flooding, extreme heat and other escalating impacts of climate change. The issue is particularly critical in many developing countries — for example, in Brazil, where food and land use drive 70% of emissions while over half the population remains food insecure.

How the world produces and consumes food also has a large bearing on its ability to end deforestation and slash methane emissions by 2030, both of which will be essential to meeting global climate targets.

COP28 in Dubai righted this wrong, with a series of breakthroughs at the nexus between food systems, food and nutrition security, agriculture and climate. Indeed, this was the COP when food finally took its place as central to the climate effort, with at least six notable outcomes that could drive transformational change in the sector:

1) 159 Countries Signed the COP28 UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action

At COP28, 159 world leaders endorsed the COP28 UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action. Together their nations represent 68% (530 million) of the world’s farmers, 75% of the global population, 77% of global food production, 81% of the world’s arable land, 83% of global emissions from the food system and 83% of the world’s agricultural GDP.

The Declaration commits these nations to scale up adaptation and resilience for farmers, fishers and food producers; to promote food security and nutrition through social protection systems, school feeding programs and more; and to support workers in agriculture and food systems to maintain inclusive, decent work.

Critically, it includes an explicit call for nations to strengthen the integrated management of water in agriculture and food systems at all levels to ensure sustainability. And it emphasizes the need to maximize the climate and environmental benefits associated with agriculture and food systems while containing and reducing harmful impacts, such as by sustainably boosting productivity, protecting and restoring land and natural ecosystems, enhancing soil health and biodiversity, and shifting from higher greenhouse gas emitting practices to more sustainable production and consumption. This includes reducing food loss and waste and promoting sustainable aquatic "blue foods."

The Declaration further commits nations, by 2025, to:

• Integrate agriculture and food systems into their national climate plans, known as "Nationally Determined Contributions" (NDCs), as well as national adaptation and biodiversity plans and long-term climate strategies.

• Revisit and reorient policies and government support — including the $700 billion of agricultural subsidies the world spends every year — towards practices which reduce greenhouse gas emissions, bolster resilience and human, animal and ecosystem health, and reduce ecosystem loss and degradation.

• Scale up and enhance access to all forms of finance in food systems, including finance for smallholder farmers.

• Increase investment in science and innovation, including innovations arising from local and Indigenous communities.

• Strengthen the multilateral trade system in support of the goals of the Declaration.

The Declaration concludes with a commitment by nations to bring their relevant ministries — including ministries of agriculture, health, climate, environment, energy and finance — together to discuss these goals and to report back on their progress at COP29.

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Cop28 landmark deal agreed to ‘transition away’ from fossil fuels

 

Summit president hails ‘historic package to accelerate climate action’ but critics decry ‘litany of loopholes’ in final text

Nearly 200 countries at the Cop28 climate summit have agreed to a deal that for the first time calls on all nations to transition away from fossil fuels to avert the worst effects of climate change.

After two weeks of at times fractious negotiations in the United Arab Emirates, the agreement was quickly gavelled through by the Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, on Wednesday morning. He received an ovation from delegates and a hug from the UN climate chief, Simon Stiell.

Despite the urging of more than 130 countries and scientists and civil society groups, the agreement did not include an explicit commitment to phase out or even phase down fossil fuels.

Instead, it reached a compromise that called on countries to contribute to global efforts to transition “away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science”.

Al Jaber argued that the deal, reached in the hottest year on record, was a comprehensive response to a global stocktake that found countries were failing to live up to the goals of the landmark Paris climate agreement, particularly a commitment to try to limit global heating to 1.5C (2.7F) above preindustrial levels.

“We have delivered a robust action plan to keep 1.5C in reach,” he said. “It is an enhanced, balanced, but make no mistake, a historic package to accelerate climate action. It is the UAE consensus. We have language on fossil fuel in our final agreement for the first time ever.”

Countries from the global south and climate justice advocates said the text fell short of what was needed on emissions reductions and finance to help the most vulnerable cope with worsening extreme weather and heat, and included language that appeared to placate fossil fuel interests.

There was confusion in the plenary hall shortly after the agreement was passed as many parties had assumed there would be a debate over the text. The Alliance of Small Island States, representing 39 countries, said it had not been in the room when the deal was adopted as it was still coordinating its response.

Its lead negotiator, Anne Rasmussen, from Samoa, did not formally object to the agreement and believed the deal had good elements, but said the “the process has failed us” and the text included a “litany of loopholes”. “We have made an incremental advancement over business as usual when what we really needed is an exponential step change in our actions and support,” she said. Her speech was met with a standing ovation.

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NSW pricing watchdog recommends overhaul of biodiversity offsets scheme

By: Lisa Cox - The Guardian

Tribunal found developers were paying into fund five times faster than the Biodiversity Conservation Trust was able to find required offsets

The New South Wales pricing watchdog has recommended an overhaul of the state’s biodiversity offsets scheme including phasing out a policy that allows developers to pay into a fund in order to meet their offset obligations.

The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) conducts annual monitoring of the scheme, which allows developers to buy credits to compensate for habitat destruction caused by their projects.

In a report published on Monday, the tribunal said the scheme was “not operating well” in five key areas and that “fundamental obstacles” persisted that hindered its ability to function effectively.

“The key role of the biodiversity credits market is to connect biodiversity credit buyers and sellers to trade credits at a price that reflects the efficient cost of offsetting biodiversity,” tribunal member Sandra Gamble said.

“However, the annual report has found the biodiversity credits market is not performing well and requires several changes.”

Ipart is the latest body to highlight major concerns with the scheme.

An investigation of offsetting by Guardian Australia triggered multiple inquiries in 2021 after identifying offsets that had been promised and not delivered, so-called “double dipping” on offsets in areas that already had some form of protection and restoration activity, and concerns about conflicts of interest among consultants working in the scheme.

Almost every inquiry found major issues with a fund, managed by the state’s Biodiversity Conservation Trust (BCT), that developers can pay into rather than buying credits directly from the market. The trust must then buy offsets on developers’ behalf.

In 2022, the NSW auditor general found the offset obligations the trust took on were increasing every year. It found there was a risk the fund would fall short of what was needed to buy the necessary offsets to compensate for habitat destruction that had occurred in the state.

Ipart’s review finds that in 2022-23 only one in five developers secured offsets by direct purchase of credits through the market, while four in five chose to make payments into the fund.

The tribunal found developers were paying into the fund five times faster than the BCT was able to find the required offsets.

The tribunal has recommended the government phase out the option to pay into the fund and “establish interim measures to manage the change while the market develops”.

“IPART’s report has shown that six years in, the scheme is a complete failure,” the NSW Greens environment spokesperson Sue Higginson said.

“The government must now take immediate and drastic action to freeze all contributions into the fund and develop a new approach that centres biodiversity values above all else.”

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Anonymously funded group stokes local opposition to Ohio solar project

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