COP29 round-up: Food systems drop down the agenda

Surely, if there’s anything that we need world leaders to agree on, then it’s what to do about climate change?

2024 has been the hottest year on record, and currently the food system is on course to be the world’s most potent source of global warming. Nobody but the global giants of industrialised meat and dairy can deny it is a pressing issue. At the COP29 meeting that concluded last Friday in Baku, the topic of agri-food needed to be front and centre on the agenda… But was it?

Just one week on from COP29, it seems the main achievement on food was establishing a programme which will help support farmers most affected by climate change in the global south: the Harmoniya Climate Initiative.

However, the main thrust of discussions and engagement on the more complex political and social realities of changing agrifood systems fell once again to the fringe pavilions to deliver, where even the catering appeared to be in disarray with fish and cheese menu items mislabelled as vegetarian and vegan.

Many commentators agreed in advance that COP29 was unlikely to be big on food negotiations and dubbed it ‘the finance COP’. It is said that many in food campaigning were actually gearing up for what is seen as the bigger opportunity of COP30 next year in Brazil.

Recognising that food system solutions are climate solutions is one thing. Figuring out what form global agreements on food systems should ultimately take clearly appears to be another.

When farming and food culture differ so widely across continents, what it means for there to be an internationally binding legal framework is a thorny question. Factor in the need to simultaneously protect the lives and livelihoods of farmers living on the frontline of climate change while regulating and reducing emissions from global agri-business, and a whole new layer of complexity arises.

Progress on COP negotiations may seem slow, if not patently geological, and there’s definitely a tendency to kick the proverbial food and climate can down the road. But let’s not forget that the issue was kept out of the debate at COP for valuable lost decades. In concrete terms, our global food system is a relative newcomer at the climate negotiations.

Indeed, up until the COP26 climate summit, food and agriculture were entirely absent from the formal agenda. The seeds of change were sown at the 2021 meeting by ardent campaigners, and the Glasgow Food and Climate Declaration emerged. Although an informal agreement, for those who signed up it represented a commitment by local and regional governments to tackle the climate emergency through integrated food policies. It was clearly a step in the right direction.

The so-called ‘Africa COP’, COP27 in 2022, was regarded as a prime opportunity for global food systems commitments, and an agreement was reached on including agroecology in the technical discussions about agriculture. When the 2022 biodiversity COP then gave rise to the global goal of protecting a third of land and sea for nature, the resultant Montreal Accord became a formal agreement which implicated food systems change in delivering its targets – albeit indirectly. Fast-forward a year to 2023’s COP28, to what has become known as the ‘food COP’, and we saw a declaration from 159 heads of state and government on the importance of addressing emissions from our food system.

Along the way in the last decade or so of COP summits, we’ve had declarations on deforestation and attempts to limit methane emissions. We’ve had discussions of policy pathways, and financial commitments to a more sustainable future. Yet somehow, at each annual COP meeting, real delivery on the much-needed transition to a more sustainable food future always seems to remain a long, long way off.