Thousands of delegates gathered in Baku, Azerbaijan this week for COP29this year’s United Nations climate summit. Before the conference, experts predicted this food and agriculture would take center stagethanks to an agenda that included addressing methane emissions from food systems. Officials leading some of the world’s most influential food policy organizations attend, including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Food Programme, and CGIAR, formerly the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.
These specialists prepared for COP29 with high hopes for the agreement that will eventually come out of the conference. Some are keen to see negotiators commit to more financing commitments in decarbonising food systems, while others aim to scale up humanitarian aid pledges to tackle global hunger. But as the first week of the summit draws to a close, food policy experts said the results of the latest US presidential election undermines progress on an issue that has long neglected in international climate talks.
“Things look very bad for agriculture and agri-food systems,” says Claudia Ringler, director of the natural resources and resilience unit at CGIAR’s International Food Policy Research Institute.
The incoming Trump presidency “dramatically lowered” her expectations of tangible outcomes related to food systems. “The chance to get something serious and positive out of it [COP29]? Extremely bleak,” Ringler said.
Food systems account for about a third of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Most of this comes from livestock: Cattle, sheep and other ruminants blow methane into the air as they digest food. Methane is 80 to 90 times more potent than carbon in its first 20 years in the atmosphere. Meanwhile, approx 733 million people went hungry last year, with the majority living in countries whose economies depend on agriculture. The challenge for international policymakers is to find a way to scale back agricultural emissions while also ensuring that there is enough food to feed an increasingly food-insecure world population.
One of the biggest action items expected to come out of COP29 is the regulation of methane. Almost 160 countries have pledged at least a 30 percent reduction from 2020 methane emission levels by 2030 – a voluntary agreement that emerged at COP26 in 2021 – but most have yet to develop a policy path to achieve this. Meanwhile, methane emissions rising faster than any other greenhouse gas.
But the global initiatives unveiled in Baku has so far focused on reducing methane emissions from oil and gas and landfill sectors — not animal agriculture.
Ringler doesn’t expect that to change by the time the summit concludes next Friday. Even without the backdrop of a fraught political climate in the US, negotiations over agricultural emissions have “broken down every year,” Ringler said, calling it a recurring “deadlock” over how to strike a balance between climate stabilization and food production. find.
She also does not expect much from the Baku Harmoniya Climate Initiative for Farmersa new effort launched by the COP29 presidency to bring together farming coalitions and financing networks, which she described as “all just for show.” Many initiatives from the previous summit did not translate into real action.
“It’s so different from the energy system,” said Ringler, who noted that while decarbonizing energy requires a relatively simple transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, decarbonizing food systems is not so simple. Limiting emissions from food systems will require changes to agricultural consumption and production, while also ensuring that the parts of the world that are starving have access to enough food. She argues that “the only way to decarbonize the food system is by affecting food production.”
Martin Frick, director of the United Nations World Food Program office in Berlin, has been working on these issues for decades and has only recently seen the climate footprint of food and agriculture begin to make its way into closed-door negotiations. Despite high expectations going into the conference, food systems were “not very prominent” on the COP29 agenda, he said.
Still, Frick noted that the recent U.S. election is driving a sense of “urgency” on the ground at Baku that he thinks is prompting accelerated action on other issues that could ultimately decarbonize food systems indirectly—namely, highly controversial carbon credit trading rules and a new global aid goal it could, in theory, help lower-income nations move away from fossil fuels.
The long-term answer to ballooning humanitarian aid needs, Frick said, “may not lie in moving large quantities of food around the world, but must strengthen the ability of people on the ground to grow their own food produce.”
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Others consider the reduced US presence at the summit and the conspicuous absence of several big name world leaders a sign to temper expectations.
Elodie Guillon of the global nonprofit World Animal Protection isn’t hoping for a big announcement or significant funding commitment that promotes reducing emissions for food systems. Instead, she hedges her bets with Baku to get clarity on existing agreements.
Guillon wants to see “clear guidance” from countries as they update theirs nationally determined contributions — emission reduction measures mandated by the 2015 Paris Agreement – with strong targets for reducing food and agricultural emissions. Beyond that, the summit is mostly “a stone along the path,” she said.
Guillon looks forward to the next COP, which convenes next November in Belém, Brazil, to be the right bell in financing a just transition to sustainable food systems. Until then, while the impact of the US election will likely slow some climate progress, Guillon said, “the global food movement will not stop because of it.”
Stephanie Feldstein, director of population and sustainability at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, also noted that while Trump’s re-election may be a “blow at a critical time for climate action, it’s not the end of the story.” “
The USA is one of the planet’s leading producers and consumers of meat and dairy products. At last year’s COP28, as world leaders a agriculture declaration promiseUS Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack evade a question about whether people in countries like the US should reduce meat consumption to meet climate goals.
Therein lies an unexpected opportunity, Feldstein said. If Trump does end withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement a second timewill sideline the nation in future global gatherings, which could pave the way for other countries to prioritize mitigating emissions from animal agriculture.
“Perhaps there is an opportunity that other countries that are willing to seriously address food and agricultural emissions will be able to do so,” Feldstein said, “and will be able to put the rest of the world on a better path to the to really decarbonize the system.”
