COP28: New report finds agriculture most climate-affected sector; calls for urgent food systems focus in L&D fund
- December 2, 2023
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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COP28: New report finds agriculture most climate-affected sector; calls for urgent food systems focus in L&D fund
Subject : Environment
Section: International Conventions
Context:
- Agriculture is the climate-affected sector globally, with 40 per cent of countries reporting economic losses explicitly linked to it, according to a new United Nations (UN) analysis.
Details:
- Some 134 countries — representing over 5.7 billion people, 70 per cent of the food we eat, nearly 500 million farmers and 76 per cent of total emissions from the global food system — signed the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action.
- The agrifood sector employed over 866 million people globally in 2020 and represented a turnover of $3.6 trillion.
Analysis findings:
- Analysis was done by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
- It is an analysis of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of 168 countries as part of their climate commitments under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
- About one-third (or 35 per cent) of current climate action plans explicitly refer to L&D, highlighting the growing relevance of the issue on the global stage, with agriculture being identified as the single most impacted area.
- About three-fourths of countries explicitly mentioning loss and damage are middle-income nations. The mentions are concentrated in Latin America and the Caribbean, followed by East Asia and the Pacific, and Europe and Central Asia.
- Among countries reporting on L&D, 33 per cent of non-economic losses related to the agricultural sector.
Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action:
- Announced at a special session of the World Climate Action Summit led by Joko Widodo, President of Indonesia; Giorgia Meloni, Prime Minister of Italy; Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa, Prime Minister of Samoa and Anthony J Blinken, Secretary of State for the United States of America.
- This Declaration commits 134 countries to integrating food into their climate plans — or NDCs — by 2025, marking the first time in UN climate talks that countries have made a clear commitment to take action on the global food system.
- The countries also included those with highest food systems-related greenhouse gas emissions like Brazil, China and the European Union.
- Food loss and waste is responsible for 8 to 10 per cent of global emissions.
- Food banks around the world are a time-tested solution by collecting surplus food and delivering it to those who need it.
Global Agrifood System:
- Agrifood systems refer to the journey of food from farm to table – including when it is grown, fished, harvested, processed, packaged, transported, distributed, traded, bought, prepared, eaten and disposed of.
- It has the benefit of nutrition and livelihood.
Hidden costs of Global Agrifood System:
- The global agrifood system has hidden costs, such as those related to health and the environment. These add up when estimating the value of the agricultural process of production, distribution and consumption, to society.
- The hidden costs – a cost that is not reflected in the market price of a product or service – is 12.7 trillion at 2020 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) dollars. The total hidden cost is equivalent to the 10% of th global GDP.
- These hidden costs come from greenhouse gas and nitrogen emissions, water use, land-use change, unhealthy dietary patterns, undernourishment and poverty.
- The majority of the hidden costs (over $9 trillion or 73% of the total $12.7 trillion hidden costs in 2020) are health-related costs resulting from productivity loss because of unhealthy dietary patterns.
- Most of these costs come from upper-middle-income countries (39% of the total hidden costs) and high-income countries (36%). Lower-middle-income countries contribute 22% of the hidden costs, while low-income countries make up 3%.
- In lower-middle-income countries, the social costs from poverty and undernourishment are more significant contributors to hidden costs.
Country-wise estimate of the hidden cost:
- The countries with the highest net hidden costs are the world’s largest food producers and consumers, with the United States of America accounting for 13% of total quantified hidden costs, the European Union 14%, and the bloc of Brazil, the Russian Federation, India and China (the BRIC countries) accounting for 39%.
- In India the total hidden costs of the agrifood systems amount to $1.12 trillion.
- Under the total hidden costs, social costs includes the cost of poverty among agrifood workers, cost of dieseases related to undernourishment and dietry patterns.
The State of Food and Agriculture 2023 report- released by the UN FAO.
- The report introduces True Cost Accounting (TCA) as an approach to estimate hidden costs and to unveil the hidden impacts of agrifood systems on environment, health and livelihoods.
- TCA goes beyond market exchanges to account for all flows to and from agrifood systems, including those not captured by market transactions.
- Database used are- FAO’s Corporate Database for Substantive Statistical Data (FAOSTAT), the World Bank’s World Development Indicators, the Global Burden of Disease database, and the Ecosystem Services Valuation Database.
Source: Down To Earth, Mongabay