At the global meeting in Azerbaijan, FAO raised agrifood solutions as key for addressing the climate crisis and supported the COP29 Presidency with important initiatives
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) brought a critical message to the 2024 UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan: increased investment in agrifood systems is essential to address the climate crisis.
Over the two weeks of the international meeting and through events, initiatives and several publications, FAO emphasised that agrifood systems hold the solutions to tackling major interlinked challenges facing people and the planet, including climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation, food insecurity, and poverty.
“The Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals are beyond reach without agrifood systems transformation”, underscored FAO Director-General QU Dongyu, the head of the FAO delegation to COP29.
This COP dubbed the “climate finance COP,” saw nations grappling with the establishment of a new global climate finance target (NCQG) to replace the expiring $100 billion goal. The outcome acknowledged the need for vastly increased investments even if it did not lock in the full investments that will likely be needed. Aligning with this, FAO’s presence and inputs at COP29 focused not just on the quantity of finance, but also on where that finance needs to be directed to have the greatest climate impact.
Over a series of high-level events and bilateral meetings with world leaders and UN representatives, QU Dongyu and FAO experts called for increased investment in agrifood systems transformation, emphasising the need for these systems to be prioritised in multilateral environmental agreements and fully integrated into national planning processes.
During the World Leaders Summit, FAO Director-General QU Dongyu was a prominent voice, advocating for the importance of investing in agrifood systems in addressing climate change.
At an event where panellists discussed the importance of Green Climate Fund (GCF) investments to support adaptation in vulnerable and fragile contexts, Qu stressed the urgent need for increased financing and investment. He highlighted examples of recently approved GCF projects in Iraq and Somalia led by FAO, emphasising the need to support fragile and conflict-affected countries where the impacts of climate change are most severe.