UN Food Systems Stocktaking Moment+2 - High Level Session on Food Systems and Climate Action - Opening Remarks
by Dr QU Dongyu, FAO Director-General
24/07/2023
UN Food Systems Stocktaking Moment+2
High Level Session on Food Systems and Climate Action
Opening Remarks
By
Dr QU Dongyu, FAO Director-General
Monday, 24 July 2023
(16:30 – 17.30)
Excellences,
Distinguished Guests,
Dear Colleagues,
The Food Systems Stocktaking Moment+2 meeting, and this Session on Climate Action, take place at a time of cascading crises – with hunger and the climate crisis prominent among them. As a result, our chances of achieving SDG2 (Zero Hunger) and SDG13 (Climate Action), and many other SDGs, are fading fast. These two goals are inter-linked.
Agrifood systems and the communities that produce our food including farmers, fishers, forest-dependent people and pastoralists, are hurt the most, as the impacts of the climate crisis intensify.
The FAO State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023 report informs that 735 million people faced hunger last year. The climate crisis was a key driver of this food insecurity.
At the same time, agrifood systems produce a third of global greenhouse gas emissions – further intensifying the climate impacts. Agrifood systems transformation can break this vicious cycle because agrifood systems can provide the solutions to food insecurity, to poverty, to climate change and to biodiversity loss.
But to achieve this, they need to be urgently transformed to be more efficient, more inclusive, more resilient and more sustainable, for better production, better nutrition, a better environment and a better life – leaving no one behind.
These solutions are at the core of the FAO Strategy on Climate Change and its Action Plan, as well as in the FAO Strategy on Science and Innovation, and in the Strategy for Mainstreaming Biodiversity across Agricultural Sectors. Working with Members and partners, FAO is pursuing bold climate action through these inter-connected thematic strategies.
FAO is innovating to curb methane emissions in production systems; improve value chain efficiency; reduce food loss and waste; and restore ecosystems, among many other important actions.
At COP28 later this year, FAO will present a roadmap that highlights agrifood sector solutions in support of SDG2 and SDG13. Solutions covering crops and livestock production, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture, land, water and soils. Solutions that support resilience, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase carbon sequestration and ensure food security.
To deliver these solutions, we will need enabling policies and adequate institutional and regulatory frameworks. We will need science-based interventions that leverage innovation and digital solutions. We will need inclusion –listening to the needs and sharing in the knowledge of all, including youth, women and Indigenous Peoples. We will need collaboration, across all sectors and at all levels.
The Food and Agriculture for Sustainable Transformation initiative – called FAST, launched by the Egyptian Presidency at COP27, is a good example of the type of effective collaboration needed. Supported by FAO and partners, FAST aims to improve the quantity and quality of climate finance backing agrifood systems transformation. Increasing finance is critical.
Currently, there is still a large gap to fill to reach the USD 350 billion per year needed to meet climate-related goals in agrifood systems. We must therefore find ways to deliver finance that is fit for purpose that matches the scale of impacts, that supports the most vulnerable and the most affected, and that addresses loss and damage that constrains countries’ abilities to invest in adaptation measures in the agriculture sector.
Agrifood systems can support delivery on climate and sustainable development objectives, but only if we work together in an efficient, effective and coherent manner to transform them.
FAO is fully committed to this task. And we are willing to have a closer cooperation leading from COP27, to COP 29 and beyond to build a coherent narrative between climate change and agrifood systems transformation.
But we cannot do it alone. Let us continue to work collectively to ensure a better future for all, for people, planet and prosperity.
Thank you.