UN
Climate Change
Global
Climate Action
4
August
2021 | |
High Level Climate Champions
Newsletter | |
Sustainable Food Can Drive Sustainable
Development | |
Food
systems account for roughly 20-40 per cent of
all greenhouse gas emissions and 80 per cent of
biodiversity loss. The industry is also a major
economic generator - worth
around US$8 trillion,
or 10 per cent of GDP, with a large
portion of young people
in developing countries relying on it for income
and livelihoods.
Addressing
food systems systemically can therefore deliver
outsized impact on decarbonisation and
resilience - as well as the interlinked
challenges of biofood diversity loss,
desertification and broader sustainable
development.
The
good news? We know what can deliver this. For
example, using nature-based solutions, we could
reduce or remove up to 98 gigatonnes of CO2
equivalent from the atmosphere by 2030 (that’s
around three times the global
CO2 emissions
from energy in 2019) as well as regenerate
systems of nature which underpin the global food
system and livelihoods.
The
UN’s first Food
Systems Summit
in September presents an opportunity to spur the
sector’s transformation in line with net zero
emissions in the 2040s, healthier diets, an end
to biodiversity loss, and building climate
resilience. With a focus on solutions, the
summit will bring together nutritionists,
farmers, indigenous peoples, governments, the
private sector, youth and others to set new
commitments and initiatives that can accelerate
all 17 of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals
for 2030.
The
work started at a pre-summit
in Rome last week. The event was dubbed the
People’s Summit because of its unprecedented
level of engagement, with dialogues in 145
countries involving tens of thousands of people,
alongside national-level dialogues and
consultations. It also saw the formation of
clusters to promote the best game-changing
solutions to the systemic problems facing food
systems. Watch talks here,
including from both High Level Climate Action
Champions, Nigel Topping and Gonzalo
Muñoz.
Incorporating
plans to improve diets and minimise food loss
and waste into national climate plans could
boost a country’s emissions reductions and
adaptation to climate change by up to a quarter,
according to a report
by WWF, the UN Environment Programme, EAT and
Climate Focus in September 2020. The combined
opportunity from addressing these issues equated
to taking 2.7 billion cars off the road.
| |
The Race to Transform
Food | |
The
High-Level Climate Champions team is working
with businesses, investors and local governments
to make half the world’s food systems
regenerative by 2030, through both the UN-backed
Race to Zero and Race to Resilience. How? By
following the climate
action pathways
set out by the Marrakech Partnership:
- Get
public and private finance behind the
transformation. This can be driven by coalitions
like the Glasgow
Financial Alliance for Net Zero,
and requires a repurposing of food and
agriculture subsidies and better links between
government institutions dealing with
agriculture, environment, health and
finance.
- Bring
farmers and producers into the debate on the
policies needed. Three-quarters of all food is
produced by small farmers, who are
underrepresented in international discussions
yet also most at risk from climate change. The
Climakers,
a Race to Resilience partner that includes
farmer organisations from the Carribean, Africa
and Europe, is giving farmers a platform in
political processes on climate change and
agriculture. The UK National
Farmers Union
is setting a clear pathway to net-negative
agriculture as early as 2030, while Agriculture for 1.5
is offering farmers a tech platform to set and
deliver decarbonization
pathways.
- Innovative
practices and technologies such as alternative
protein technologies and fintech that rewards
farmers and producers for shifting to
regenerative agriculture can have outsized
impact. For example, Race to Resilience partner
Scale
for Resilience
this week detailed how it will scale financial
access for 3 million farmers to nature-based
solutions.
- More
than 20 per cent of the food supply industry is
already committed to net zero emissions.
Businesses need to set
science-based targets to drive up
regenerative agriculture and deforestation-free
supply chains, and can do so by joining the new
Science
Based Targets for Nature.
| |
Converging Action into Exponential
Change | |
Nearly
three-quarters of global emissions are now
covered by goals for reaching net zero. Now it’s
time to translate those commitments into
credible government policies and private sector
plans for getting there.
The
science is clear: for our best chance of
limiting global warming to 1.5°C, we need to
halve greenhouse gas emissions between 2020 and
2030, while radically regenerating nature. And
that requires us - as a global economy - to hit
breakthroughs in the largest and heaviest
emitting sectors within the coming
years.
The
immediate challenge is for 20 per cent of key
actors in each sector to commit by 2023 to
following their sector’s Climate Action Pathway,
by joining the UN Race to Zero campaign or
similar targets. They should then deliver on
their first sector-specific target within the
decade. This includes goals for renewables to
provide at least 60 per cent of global power
generation by 2030, for zero-emissions vehicles
to make up 15 per cent of all car and van sales
by 2025, and for 50 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent
to be mitigated by land use, food and
agriculture by 2030.
In
the finance sector, for example, price signals
and profit motives will need to be corrected so
that the true cost of climate change impacts is
reflected in balance sheets, according to the
newly released climate
action pathway for finance.
Within the 2020s, policymakers, civil society,
local governments, corporates and financial
institutions will need to drive sectoral
breakthroughs including a correction of market
failures and closing of the valuation gap, a
shift in long-term investment mindset that
embeds the 2050 long-term target and steps
needed to get there, and the embedding of
climate-aware sustainable approaches to risk
management and incentives.
This
is about driving systems change, and systems
change is about converging action towards
exponential - rather than linear -
change.
“The
more we converge, the lower the risk, the lower
the cost and the faster we can go,” COP26
High-Level Champion Nigel Topping says in his
new TED Countdown talk: Three
Rules for a Zero-Carbon World.
“So, what might have seemed a real stretch or
even impossible just a few years ago seems
eminently achievable now.”
| |
- How
do you see the future
of the Race to Zero?
The High-Level Climate Champions team is still
accepting written submissions, as part of a
public consultation on how to drive cooperation
and coordination within the climate action
ecosystem.
- Three
Rules for a Zero-Carbon World:
Watch Nigel Topping’s new TED Countdown talk, in
which he shares three rules of radical
collaboration that could positively disrupt
global economic patterns.
- The
Marrakech Partnership climate
action pathway for finance,
released by UN Climate Change, sets out the
crucial role the finance sector can and must
play in accelerating the transition to net zero
- including pricing carbon to ensure the
polluter pays the true cost of its
impact.
- Mangroves
prevent more than US $65 billion in property
damages from storms and reduce flood risk to
some 15 million people every year, and are the
most efficient system in the world for catching
and storing CO2, according to the Global
Mangrove Alliance’s inaugural State of
the World’s Mangroves Report.
- Africa’s
abundant but untapped renewable energy resources
can meet the huge rise in power demand expected
by 2040, according to the
International Renewable Energy
Agency.
To unlock the potential, Africa needs to revise
its regional master plans away from fossil fuels
and towards cheapening renewables.
- The
Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance launched
#heatseason
in Europe. Mayors from across the continent
joined to announce commitments to deploy
scalable solutions to combat the impact of
extreme heat.
- A
new assessment of 100 oil and gas
companies,
based on the International Energy Agency’s
scenario for net zero emissions by 2050, finds a
systemic lack of accountability and action and a
need for more investment and greater
transparency. The assessment was carried out by
the World Benchmarking Alliance, CDP and
ADEME.
- The
newly launched multi-stakeholder platform,
Voluntary Carbon Market Integrity
Initiative,
is designed to drive credible, net-zero aligned
participation in voluntary carbon markets. The
consultation report
makes clear how voluntary carbon markets can
make a meaningful and significant contribution
to meeting the Paris Agreement’s goals.
- Creating
a domestic industry for solar water heaters can
help transition countries that rely on fossil
fuel imports for heating, or where electric
boilers and heat pumps will strain power systems
or set unaffordable household prices, according
to another IRENA
report.
- Dear
leaders: uproot the systems destroying our home,
Ugandan climate activist Evelyn Acham writes in
the Race to Zero’s Our
World In Your Hands
series. You can write your own letter to leaders
ahead of COP26 here.
Enjoyed
this round-up? Keep up to date with daily news
from the Race to Zero, Race to Resilience and
our partners on racetozero.unfccc.int!
| |
The
High-Level Climate Champions’ newsletter is
going on holiday for August and will be back in
early September - have a lovely
month! | |
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