FAO Climate Change, Biodiversity and Environment Director highlights COP28 agrifood takeaways in Brussels visit

Upon invitation by the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU, Kaveh Zahedi FAO’s Director for Climate Change, Biodiversity and Environment, attended the AGRIFAO Working Party.  His briefing to AGRIFAO Members highlighted the importance of transforming agrifood systems as an essential contributing factor to climate action and presented key takeaways from FAO’s participation at COP28, held last December in Dubai.  

In his presentation, Zahedi outlined many of the key outcomes from the over 200 events and initiatives of COP28 that addressed agrifood systems and climate challenges, including the Global Stocktake, the Glasgow–Sharm el-Sheikh work programme on the global goal on adaptation and the Loss and Damage, and within the UAE COP28 Presidency’s programme, with the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate and the Partnership on Water-Resilient Food Systems. 

Zahedi also highlighted the initiatives launched to implement the Emirates Declaration, namely the Technical Cooperation Collaborative, the COP28 Agriculture, Food and Climate Action Toolkit, the Agrifood Sharm-El Sheikh Support Program and the FAST Partnership – this last one presented at COP27 and focusing on climate finance.  He also linked the outputs from COP28 with the FAO Strategy on Climate Change (2022-2031) and its corresponding Action Plan. 

While in Brussels, Zahedi held bilateral meetings,  including with Zakia Khattabi, Belgium’s Federal Minister for Climate, the Environment, Sustainable Development and  Green Deal, and with officials from the European Commission including Carla Montesi, Director, Green Deal & Digital Agenda at DG INTPA as well as representatives from DG CLIMA and DG AGRI.