Roadmap Highlights Zero-Hunger Climate Adaptation Strategies

How can the world produce more nutritious food to address global needs now while not contributing to climate change that would endanger future food security?

Put another way, how can food production become sustainable to supply future generations’ demands?

Agriculture has taken centre stage during the COP28, this year’s annual climate summit held in Dubai, which pleased critics as it is a significant source of planet-warming GHG emissions.

A study published in Science Advances on September 2023 shows that six of nine planetary boundaries have exceeded safe limits. These six – climate change, biosphere integrity (genetic diversity), land system change, freshwater change, and biogeochemical flows (Nitrogen and Phosphorus) are strongly linked to agrifood systems, and the breach has increased since 2015.

These nine planetary boundaries are critical for maintaining the stability and resilience of the Earth system as a whole and are all heavily disturbed by human activities. The study says crossing the earth’s system tipping points will severely impact people and biodiversity.

According to Stockholm Resilience Centre, co-author of the study, the only way to come back from the overshoot is to transition back within all Planetary Boundaries by phasing out fossil fuels, transforming the food system, and removing pressures on all planetary boundaries — in a just way.

Centre professor Johan Rockström, a director at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and who attends most of the COP meeting, says the energy and food systems transitions are the two significant transformations that need to happen to have any chance of holding the Paris Agreement.

Meeting the challenge, the Food and Agriculture Organization launched a new Global Roadmap process to eradicate hunger while keeping the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement alive.

The organisation’s message is clear: “Agrifood systems solutions are climate solutions, and increased collaboration and finance are needed if the world is to achieve the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.”

The report, volume 1 (Presenting a global vision), is the first of three reports – Volume 2 (Moving from a global to a regional view and from a vision to costing and financing) and Volume 3 (Establishing country action plans, monitoring and accountability) will be launched at the following two UN climate summits, COP29 in 2024 and COP30 a year after, respectively.

“The FAO roadmap process, presented at the first-ever UN-climate-COP Food, Agriculture and Water Day, is aimed at eliminating hunger and all forms of malnutrition without exceeding the 1.5°C threshold set by the Paris Agreement. It outlines a comprehensive strategy spanning the next three years that encompasses a diverse portfolio of solutions across ten distinct domains of action: clean energy, crops, fisheries and aquaculture, food loss and waste, forests and wetlands, healthy diets, livestock, soil and water, and data and inclusive policies (COP28: FAO, 2023).