The first ever day dedicated to food and agriculture at the United Nations’ annual climate conference was expected to be significant. But some of the buzz erupted at the gathering in Dubai on Sunday after the UN released the first part of its long-awaited “road map” to alleviate hunger and climate pollution from food and agriculture, a source of about a third of the world’s greenhouse, to reduce. gas emissions. It was far from the groundbreaking proposal climate advocates had hoped for. They say it lacks a vision to move away from chemical fertilizers and an industrial livestock industry that emits a staggering amount of methane.
“The roadmap fails to mention the fact that industrial agriculture is the second largest cause of emissions on the planet,” said Teresa Anderson, who leads the global climate justice program at ActionAid International, a humanitarian organization. “It’s kind of dancing around the elephant in the room by refusing to mention the real problem. It’s a ‘trying to please people’ kind of report, without calling anyone out.”
The first of its kind road map aims to reform how food is produced around the world to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). It is essentially a guide drawn up by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization in the hope that member states will eventually follow the recommendations. The document outlines goals to cut a quarter of methane emissions from livestock by 2030, feed the world in a way that is carbon neutral by 2035, and transform agriculture into an industry that absorbs more carbon than it emits by 2050 . but also fisheries, food waste, forestry, and more, the FAO advocates a “global rebalancing” of meat consumption and access to nutritious food and calls for “improved efficiency,” such as shifting to animal feed that reduces methane pollution.
Advocates praised world leaders for finally speaking out at this year’s conference on food and agriculture. But some think the road map falls short. In particular, critics say, it prioritizes incremental change over wholesale shifts in agriculture, such as moving away from industrialized farming and toward an approach that promotes biodiversity and carbon storage by integrating crops with surrounding ecosystems.
The roadmap also barely mentions fossil fuels. By one estimate, 15 percent of global oil, gas and coal use is linked to food and agriculture. The FAO’s proposal has a section on clean energy, but it focuses on making biofuels more sustainable and on controversial technologies such as carbon capture rather than tackling the scope of oil and gas across agricultural supply chains.
“Industrial food systems are locked in fossil fuel dependency,” says Patty Fong, who directs a climate program at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. “They’re not actually calling for the decoupling of food systems from fossil fuels.”
The FAO document highlights 120 actions, such as limiting methane emissions from rice farming (a source of 8 percent of human-generated methane) and improving soil health by, for example, tilling less land and planting more cover crops such as clover. The organization plans to release two more “volumes” of the roadmap at the next two UN climate conferences. The second installment will include regional analyses, and the third will have specific country action plans.
Before the organization published the document, climate advocates and critics expected it to appeal to rich countries like the United States, where the average person eats more than their body weight in meat each year, to consume less and help reduce the huge amount reduce meat. methane generated by livestock, especially cows. But apart from saying that the world needs to adjust consumption patterns, the report does not give details or name specific countries as consuming too much.
The road map also says almost nothing about alternatives to meat – a solution that the UN’s own environmental program in its first report on alternative proteins, described as “important” just days before the roadmap appeared.
Shayna Fertig, a co-author of that report and an adviser at the Good Food Institute, an international think tank based in Washington, DC that promotes alternative proteins, said efforts to improve animal agriculture are necessary but should not come at the expense of doesn’t come from that. ” to develop substitutes for meat and dairy.
Fong said she’s not surprised the roadmap doesn’t affect meat consumption, a “highly political” issue.
One thing the report advocates for is making livestock farming more productive by breeding climate-resistant cows and developing feed that is more digestible – so cattle belch less methane. Some researchers consider these reforms as necessary if the demand for meat rises, but others see them as distractions from the broader need to make the world less dependent on industrialized animal agriculture.
Despite what she sees as drawbacks and omissions, Fong said the roadmap was not a total disappointment. She praised it for being “comprehensive” – because it affects much more than agriculture – and for tackling issues such as land use that are often overlooked. The destruction of carbon-rich forests and wetlands through the expansion of animal agriculture is one of the reasons why farming is responsible for so much of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, and among the FAO’s more ambitious goals is to end all deforestation by 2035.
