Joint FAO- EU Side Events at COP26: Actions to deliver on the climate agenda

Climate change is, no doubt, one of the existential threats of modern times. To be addressed, it requires strong commitment from the international community, coordinated and coherent actions backed by sufficient financial means to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement.

November saw the World Leaders Summit in Glasgow that gathered over 190 countries, regional and international organizations, civil society, financial institutions and many more, in a common aspiration to stave off the effects of climate change. Embodied in the Glasgow Climate Pact, the commitments endorsed at the end of the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) Conference, will aim to reshape the climate agenda by increasing targets to reduce emissions and keep global temperature from rising, referencing the need to scale down coal-fire power and subsidies for fossil fuels and speeding up the five-year timeline for countries to submit new or updated Nationally Determined Contributions. Despite these progressive steps taken by the international community, much more needs to be done, including on the implementation side. 

FAO, under the leadership of its Director-General QU Dongyu, took an active part in the COP26 discussions and shared its expertise, throughout more than 60 side events. “If we want to meet our global commitments to end world hunger by 2030, we need to accelerate the transformation to greener, more inclusive, resilient, efficient and sustainable agri-food systems,” said the Director-General in a video message to participants in Glasgow.

FAO and the European Union held a series of joint side-events.

During the virtual session on ‘Unlocking investments to deliver nature-based solutions (NbS) for a green, healthy and resilient future’, partners stressed the vital role of investments in sustainable forest management to achieve international goals. The ability of nature-based solutions to catalyse local growth, generate green jobs and maintain enhanced availability of natural resources was emphasized.

The session on ‘Options for climate-neutral transition towards sustainable food systems and forest management’ saw the presentation of the results of joint work on two global databases for greenhouse gas footprints on sectorial levels (EDGAR-FOOD and EDGAR-LULUCF).

The side-event on ‘Achieving NDC commitments through transforming agri-food systems’ enabled FAO and the European Union to put forward the crucial role of agri-food systems in achieving Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

‘Transforming agriculture and food systems through inclusion, resilience and low carbon action’ was the topic of a session that underpinned how encompassing the three pillars of inclusivity, resilience and low carbon can help reaching global climate targets while ensuring food security and livelihoods for all.

COP26 ended with the adoption of the Glasgow Climate Pact, with high levels of commitments from the parties to make 2022 a year for the world to “get its act together” and improve the drive towards achieving the Paris Agreement targets. Parties were urged to come to COP27 in Egypt 2022 with updated plans on how to further curb greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

You can read more on FAO’s work on climate change here.