COP28 First Global Stock-Take: High-Level Event on Adaptation Statement

COP28

First Global Stock-Take: High-Level Event on Adaptation

 

Statement

By

Dr QU Dongyu, FAO Director-General

 

1 December 2023

 

Excellences,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

Crops, livestock, forestry, fisheries, and aquaculture offer wide-ranging opportunities for adaptation to climate change.

 

Sustainable practices in agrifood systems limit the impacts of droughts, heat waves, floods, and the resulting loss and damage.

 

They help build the resilience and adaptation of agricultural communities, while preserving natural resources and ecosystems.

 

Agrifood systems’ adaptation delivers co-benefits for food security, mitigation, disaster risk reduction, and sustainable development.

 

But the share of climate-related development finance targeting agrifood systems has decreased significantly, from 40 percent in the year 2000, to less than 20 percent currently.

 

We need to increase investment, foster partnerships, and strengthen capacities for adaptation at global, national, and local levels.

 

Initiatives like the COP27 Food and Agriculture for Sustainable Transformation Partnership that FAO supports can improve the quantity, quality, and access of climate finance towards agrifood systems.

 

FAO fully supports Members in their ambitious national objectives, in particular as set out in their Nationally Determined Contributions and National Adaptation Plans, so that all countries, especially the most vulnerable such as Small Island Developing States, Land Locked Developing Countries and Least Developed Countries, can take the appropriate adaptation and mitigation actions based on their context and priorities.

 

Thank you.