COP27: Agriculture finally on table; beware of greenwashing though, warn experts

COP27: Agriculture finally on table; beware of greenwashing though, warn experts

Subject: Environment

Context-

• Food systems and agriculture are finally on the table of a Conference of Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

About the Food and Agriculture Pavilion at the COP-27-

• The Pavilion is hosted by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, CGIAR and The Rockefeller Foundation at the climate conference.
  • CGIAR (formerly the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research) is a global partnership that unites international organizations engaged in research about food security.
• There will be dedicated discussions on food and agriculture at the first official Food and Agriculture Pavilion at the 27th COP that began November 6, 2022 at Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
• The Food and Agriculture Pavilion will put the transformation of agrifood systems at the heart of the COP agenda for the first time as an important part of the solution to the climate crisis.

Agenda of the Pavilion-

• The array of discussions include adaption for resilient agriculture in Africa, climate security for drylands, vulnerability of food systems to global food crisis, conflicts and trade shocks, and low emission climate resilient development strategies. This comes at a crucial time.
• The unprecedented drought situation in Europe, the United States and Africa, the heatwave that impacted India’s wheat crop and floods and droughts in Pakistan and China are all stark evidence of how food production is at risk from extreme weather events.

Earlier efforts to address food and agriculture system in COPs-

• Agriculture is a victim of climate change. But it is also responsible for more than a third of all greenhouse gas emissions.
• Food systems have not been addressed comprehensively at any climate COP and most countries’ climate plans do not include plans to take action on food systems.
• The only programme under UNFCCC that focuses on agriculture and food security was the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA), which was established in 2017 at COP23 in Bonn, Germany.
  • The Koronivia decision addresses six interrelated topics on soils, nutrient use, water, livestock, methods for assessing adaptation, and the socio-economic and food security dimensions of climate change across the agricultural sectors.
  • The decision resonates with FAO’s core mandate to eliminate hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition, reduce rural poverty, and make agriculture, forestry and fisheries more productive and sustainable.
• The KJWA has since been considered the formal mechanism for discussing food at COP.
• It did organise a few events at COP26 in Glasgow, but as usual, its voice and visibility was subdued.

Who all are responsible for failing food security-

• Experts blame the bulk of the emissions from the sector on industrial agriculture and highlight a dire need to make a shift to agroecology.
• In terms of production systems, industrial models of agriculture that are reliant on agrichemicals and monoculture cropping are failing people and the climate.
• This is because they have failed to end hunger, are depleting natural resources, exacerbating climate change and are highly vulnerable to shocks, be they from supply chains or from climate extremes.
• Small-scale traditional and biologically diverse forms of agriculture have comparatively minimal input to greenhouse gas emissions but the small-scale farmers are disproportionately impacted by climate change even though they have done little to cause the crisis.

What could be the probable solutions-

• Working with nature and local communities to support food security, livelihoods, biodiversity and help to buffer temperature extremes and sequester carbon.
• We must completely transform the way we eat, farm and distribute food.
• We need to build resilient, diverse food and farming systems based on agroecology.
• This underscored the need for urgent climate justice action and transforming food systems away from industrial agriculture.

UN warns of Greenwashing industrial agriculture-

• A growing number of green buzzwords are being used to obstruct food system reform at the climate COP.
  • The act of giving the impression that a company’s products are ecologically friendly is known as “greenwashing.”
  • Greenwashing is the practice of making unfounded claims that lead consumers to believe that a company’s products are more environmentally friendly or have a bigger positive influence on the environment than they actually do.
• One particular term, ‘nature-based solutions’, is rapidly gaining traction at international summits, but it lacks an agreed definition, a transformative vision and is being used to maintain agribusiness as usual.
• A report called Smokes & Mirror, released by IPES-Food October 27, analysed narratives at the 2021 United Nations Food Summits, COP26.
  • It found that agrifood corporations, international philanthropic organisations, and some governments are using the term ‘nature-based solutions’ to “hijack the food system sustainability agenda”, bundling it with unproven carbon offsetting schemes that are risky for land competition, the climate and entrench big agribusiness power.
• Under the guise of ‘nature-based’ or ‘climate smart’ solutions, they are perpetuating the centralised, polluting, vulnerable system of industrial monoculture farming.
• For instance, the United States and United Arab Emirates-led Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (AIM4C) has been criticised by favouring big businesses and promoting uncertain techno-fixes.
  • The mission was launched at COP26
  • Part of the promotion of climate-smart agriculture which AIM4C is doing is unproven techno fixes like feed additives and other things like more efficient use of agrochemicals, fertilisers, pesticides.
  • These are all practices that we know are not leading to produce differently but are polluting land and water.