UN launches ground-breaking plan to transform world’s agrifood systems at COP28

As COP28 heads into its final working days in Dubai, the UN’s agriculture wing launched on Sunday a ground-breaking plan that looks to transform the world’s agrifood systems from a net emitter to a carbon sink by 2050.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has identified 10 priority areas — such as livestock, soil and water, crops, diets and fisheries — where following the roadmap can help push the world closer to achieving ‘Zero Hunger’, the second of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The aim is to transform agrifood systems – which encompass how the food is farmed or raised, how it is transported, and how and where it's dispose of – growing harvesting from net emitters to into a carbon sink by 2050, capturing 1.5 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions annually. This is to help to eliminate world hunger without driving the planet past the 1.5 degree limit for global warming as set by the Paris Agreement.

In the meantime, and on the sidelines of the UN climate conference in Dubai (COP28), UN News spoke to David Laborde, Director of the Agrifood Economics Division at FAO, who said that the roadmap is designed to avoid "doomism” and provides avenues to act today in a way that can benefit all now and in the future.

This is to help to eliminate world hunger without driving the planet past the 1.5 degree limit for global warming.

"We need policymakers to act. We need the civil society to be mobilised and the private sector to understand that making better choices today means making investments more sustainable and more profitable for tomorrow.”

While 120 action points may seem like a great deal, Laborde stressed that the end goal is to achieve "a system transformation where everyone has to play a role”.

WAM