A ‘much stronger’ focus on protecting and restoring nature is needed to ensure that the new FAO roadmap, which aims to align food systems with goals relating to 1.5C and zero hunger, is successful, industry experts have said.
The FAO roadmap, which was launched at COP28 in Dubai, is the first of three volumes – at COP29 next year, a regional roadmap, as well details of associated costs, will be published, while at COP30, which is scheduled to take place in in Brazil in 2025, a series of ‘country action plans’ will be published.
The roadmap sets out a number of targets and timelines for ten areas in which immediate action is required, including livestock, soil and water, and food loss and waste, with a strong focus on healthier diets, switching from meat and dairy, and ensuring a ‘just transition’ to ensure that decarbonisation initiatives ‘leave no one behind’.
Discover the main points of the FAO roadmap here.
According to the FAO, ‘growing urgency demands action and a change in narratives. Providing healthy food for all, today and tomorrow, is crucial; as is aligning agrifood systems transformation with climate actions.
‘Agrifood systems should address food security and nutrition needs, but with mitigation, adaptation and resilience objectives. Simultaneously, the climate agenda could mobilise climate finance to unlock the potential of these systems and drive their transformation.’
‘Desperate need’
Commenting on the roadmap, Ruth Davis, Fellow at the European Climate Foundation and Senior Associate at Smith School of Enterprise and Environment in Oxford said, “The world desperately needs a roadmap which points us to a fairer, more resilient and sustainable future for food systems. The FAO has made a useful start but it doesn’t take us all the way to the destination we need.
“The roadmap’s milestones mean that companies and governments now have no excuse for ignoring food in their climate plans. But there are vital missing elements, including a much stronger focus on nature, which the FAO’s own scientists acknowledge is crucial to ensuring food security.
“Goals and targets for protecting and restoring nature, agreed by 188 governments last year in a historic global deal, must guide the next iteration of the FAO roadmap – or we all risk being on the road to nowhere.”
‘The right to food’
Elsewhere, Sophia Murphy of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy said that the roadmap “offers a welcome focus on the right to food in the cacophony of food interests that have descended on COP. The report mentions a host of critical issues, including farm income, farm worker rights, women’s empowerment, social protection, and the need for adequate, balanced, diversified and moderate diets.
“Disappointingly, the report neglects to call on big agricultural companies to make real emissions reductions, especially in rich countries where cutting methane and nitrous oxide emissions from industrial animal operations is a low-hanging fruit with huge collateral benefits for biodiversity, rural economies and healthy diets. Some of the roadmap’s recommendations on energy — in particular, on CCS, biofuels and biogas — threaten to undermine the very goals of the report.”
‘A grand challenge’
In addition, Craig Hanson, managing director of programs at the World Resources Institute, added that the quest to “feed the planet by 2050 without destroying it in the process” is one of the “grand challenges” of our time.
“The FAO roadmap adds to the growing chorus that the solution to the world’s food system involves sustainably boosting production, reducing food loss and waste, restoring degraded areas and protecting the nature that remains.
“Now each country will need to forge a path toward a more sustainable food system. Rich countries will need to nudge people toward less meat-centric diets, and advance technologies and practices to drive down agricultural emissions. Low-income countries will need to sustainably boost crop and livestock productivity, even in a changing climate. All countries will need to tackle food loss and waste. Smallholder farmers will need far more assistance to adapt to extreme weather, such as droughts and floods, which means wealthy governments need to step up. And all these changes will need to happen without further sacrificing forests for agriculture.”
