Director-General QU Dongyu and Green Climate Fund (GCF) Executive Director Yannick Glemarec today jointly hosted a high-level  event to celebrate the partnerships between FAO and GCF, supporting countries to take urgent climate action. Thanks to $430 million in GCF funding, FAO is supporting large scale projects that will build resilience and mitigate the effects of climate change in Chile, El Salvador, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Pakistan and Paraguay, with smaller projects supporting climate readiness action in 12 additional countries. The event took place on the sidelines of the COP25 climate summit in Madrid and was attended by COP25 President, and Minister of Environment of...

FAO Director-General QU Dongyu today called for a transformational change aimed at addressing food security, agriculture and forestry together - through a holistic approach. "It is possible to reconcile food security, agriculture production and forest conservation," said the FAO chief at a dialogue on "turning the tide on deforestation" on the margins of COP25. To this end, FAO is working with countries to coordinate land use approaches across sectors, ensuring integrated management of forests and agriculture so that both food security and forestry objectives are met. Qu pointed out that a number of countries have managed to reduce the number of undernourished people...

At COP25 in Madrid today, Heads of UN agencies met for a high-level Leadership Dialogue on how to turn the tide on deforestation and committed to the common goal of helping countries reduce deforestation and improve forest management. According to the UN, up to 23% of all greenhouse gas emissions derive from the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sector. However, a myriad of forest-based solutions taking place on the ground show the real and promising results that forests can deliver. As President of COP25, Chile initiated the “Santiago Call for Action on Forests.” The call highlights the fact that climate change,...

Global development and climate objectives enshrined in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement require swift, transformative action. There are increasing calls for change to be ‘transformational’ rather than ‘incremental’, characterised by scale, speed and depth. This requires changing power relations, discourse, attitudes, policies and practices from global to local levels. Transformational change is central to the mandates of leading climate finance mechanisms,  including the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and Climate Investment Funds (CIF). At COP25 of UNFCCC, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) joined the GCF and the CIF to present some of its latest...

On 9 December on the margins of the 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP25), the UN-REDD Programme, the UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the UN University (UNU) held a side-event “Nature-Based Solutions on the Ground (SDG 15): UN Support to People and Landscapes”. The event, which featured four panels, brought together UN agencies and partners representing indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs), the private sector, and youth to demonstrate collaborative actions between agencies, funds and programmes to address climate issues through the lens of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with...