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Driving
the Day:
More than 295
million people across 53 countries faced acute
food insecurity in 2024, a number that has climbed
for six consecutive years. This is an age of
agricultural abundance – the world produces enough
food to nourish ten billion people – yet around 1.4
million people are facing catastrophic levels
of acute food insecurity, the most severe
classification on the global hunger scale.
What's driving this crisis
isn't scarcity. It's conflict, climate shocks, and
food systems that need transformation. Climate
extremes have devastated harvests. Economic
instability has pushed food prices beyond what
families can afford, forcing impossible choices
between rent and meals, medicine and
groceries.
The paradox is this: the
systems that have been built to feed humanity are
simultaneously putting future food production at
risk. Agriculture occupies nearly half of
the world’s habitable land and generates a third of
global emissions. Soil degradation affects 3.2
billion people worldwide. Fertiliser runoff
chokes waterways while its production pumps
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And as
temperatures rise and weather patterns become more
erratic, the smallholder farmers who produce most
of the world's food – often on degraded or
marginal land – find themselves on the front lines
of the climate crisis.
Here in Belém, many of the
nearly 200 party delegations come from countries
that wrestle with these challenges firsthand: how
do you lift people out of poverty, ensure food
security for millions, and restore degraded
landscapes – all while protecting what remains of
the world's most biodiverse ecosystems? Today's
announcements across Axis 3
“Transforming Food and Agriculture Systems” of
the Global Climate Action Agenda suggest that
there doesn’t have to be a choice between feeding
people and healing the planet. The transformation
begins with fixing the systems that connect
farming, food, climate, and nature, also
recognizing that farmers hold many of the
solutions.
Degraded farmland can be
restored and made productive again. Fertiliser
systems can be reimagined to feed crops, rather
than feeding the atmosphere with emissions. And
critically, the billions needed to realize this
transformation can be mobilized if the financial
architecture is put in place.
Here are today’s Action
Agenda announcements live from COP 30:
New
Finance Accelerator (RAIZ) Aims to Restore
Millions of Hectares of Degraded Farmland
Worldwide
Nine countries today
announced their support for an innovative new
global accelerator aimed at restoring degraded
farmland and mobilizing the finance needed to do
it at scale – an effort that is essential to
protecting food supplies and slowing climate
change.
Nearly 1 billion
hectares of the world’s agricultural land —
over 20% — is already degraded, reducing yields
and pushing farmers into forests and other natural
ecosystems. Officials say the damage is
reversible: restoring just 10% of degraded
cropland could bring back 44 million tonnes of
food each year, enough to meet the nutritional
needs of 154
million people.
But investment remains far
from what’s required. The sector faces a USD 105
billion funding gap, and private investors —
who could contribute up to USD 90
billion — often hesitate due to high upfront
costs and slow returns. Governments can help lower
those risks.
The new Resilient Agriculture
Investment for net-Zero land degradation
(RAIZ) accelerator is designed to do
exactly that. Led by Brazil, with backing
announced today from Australia, Canada, Germany,
Japan, Saudi Arabia, New Zealand, Norway, Peru and
the United Kingdom, the accelerator will help
governments map degraded land, identify viable
restoration projects and build financing tools
that can attract private capital.
The initiative builds on
lessons from Brazil’s experience with Green Way
and Eco Invest, which mobilized nearly USD 6
billion in public debt and commercial loans to
restore up to 3 million hectares of pastureland.
These lessons will shape how RAIZ supports
countries to build tailored financing tools that
leverage public funds to crowd in private
capital.
The accelerator will be
hosted by Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture under
the FAO FAST Partnership, with technical support
from the UNCCD G20 Global Land Initiative, the
Food and Land Use Coalition, the Green Climate
Fund, CGIAR, the World Bank and others. RAIZ
directly advances Axis 3 of
the Action Agenda and will be delivered by
partners of the Action Agenda’s Activation Group
on land restoration and sustainable
agriculture.
Brazil
and UK Scale up Low-carbon Fertilisers, Targeting
Emissions Cuts Across Global Food
Systems
Brazil and the United
Kingdom today announced a joint plan to speed the
shift to low-carbon fertilisers worldwide,
outlining the need for new standards, market
incentives and investment programmes aimed at
cutting emissions from one of the fastest-growing
contributors to climate change. The plan underpins
the Belém Declaration on Fertilisers, issued the
same day, which calls for cleaner production,
better nutrient efficiency and stronger
environmental safeguards.
The plan — known as the COP 30
Plan to Accelerate Fertiliser Solutions —
sets out concrete actions across policy, supply,
and demand. Supporting organizations include
CGIAR, FAO, the International Energy Agency, the
International Fertilizer Association, UNIDO, the
World Bank, World Resources Institute, and major
industry and finance coalitions.
First, the Hydrogen Council
and UNIDO, along with other industry and
government partners, will create the world’s first
international standard for low-emission
fertilisers, including a shared lifecycle
accounting system. The new standard is meant to
give farmers, buyers and investors clarity — and
give regulators a basis for future policy.
The plan also launches two
major demand-creation initiatives: a low-emissions
ammonia fertiliser initiative to coordinate
public-private investment in early-stage projects,
and a global buyers alliance to pool demand,
helping producers achieve scale more quickly.
Third, on the supply side,
countries will receive tailored support to help
accelerate investment in new low-carbon fertiliser
plants, especially in emerging economies capable
of producing clean ammonia with competitive
renewable energy. These programmes will bring
developers, energy providers, financiers and
agricultural buyers together to unblock
permitting, financing and infrastructure
barriers.
Finally, the plan includes
a farm-level strategy to reduce emissions from
fertiliser use, using value-chain partnerships and
digital tools — including AI systems that help
farmers optimize nutrient application and improve
soil health. The plan also identifies the need for
innovation centres to drive investment and turn
knowledge into best practices on farms to boost
nutrient use efficiency, such as the Centre of
Excellence in Fertilisers and Plant Nutrition
(CEFENP) in Brazil.
Together, officials say,
these measures are designed to deliver a
coordinated push to cut emissions from fertiliser
production and use — a sector that straddles
agriculture, heavy industry and energy, and
requires unified global action.
Why this
matters:
As opposed to a new pledge,
the Brazil–UK plan outlines how the shift to
low-carbon fertilisers will be delivered and
financed.The COP 30 plan is designed to bring
coherence to a scattered field, connecting
innovation, standards, finance and farmer-level
adoption.
The effort responds to
warnings highlighted in this year’s Breakthrough Agenda report,
which highlights that overuse of fertiliser is
causing ecosystem damage and crop losses valued
at USD 3.4
trillion annually, while underuse — especially
in Africa — weakens soils, widens yield gaps and
undermines food security.
As COP
30 Focuses on Implementation, 8 Countries Show
Food Systems Transformation Already
Underway
COP 30 has been billed as
the "COP of implementation," yet with
announcements landing constantly across Belém,
that story can be hard to trace. Today, the Alliance
of Champions for Food Systems Transformation
demonstrated what implementation actually looks
like: releasing detailed progress reports showing
how founding members are turning commitments into
funded, implementable national programmes.
Today’s announcement of three new
members –
Colombia, Italy, and Vietnam – illustrates that
scaling in action. The progress of Alliance
members offers concrete proof of what works when
governments integrate climate, agriculture, and
nature goals:
- Cambodia’s NDC
3.0 includes halving deforestation by 2030,
restoring 96,000 hectares of degraded
ecosystems, and scaling climate-smart
agriculture.
- Sierra
Leone launched a new insurance product
for smallholder farmers to protect smallholder
farmers against climate-related risks, alongside
the rehabilitation and development of over
24,000 hectares of farmland and irrigation
systems for rice cultivation.
- Norway
established climate objectives through 2035,
supported by new regulations – including
restrictions on processed food advertising to
children, legislation to cut food waste, and
expanded support for organic farming.
- Brazil unveiled
three major initiatives at COP 30: the Tropical Forests
Forever Facility, to reward forest
conservation; TERRA, to scale
agroecology through blended finance; and RAIZ, to
mobilize investment in farmland restoration.
Why this
matters:
The expansion to eight
countries today at COP 30 – adding Colombia,
Italy, and Vietnam to the founding five – signals
that this approach is replicable. Countries with
vastly different contexts are recognizing that
food systems transformation requires coordinating
across agriculture, environment, health, trade and
finance to blend funding streams and align
policies. That coordination is what makes
transformation financially viable rather than just
technically possible.
This is what implementation
looks like when it scales: proven approaches
moving from pioneer countries to a growing
coalition, with the financial mechanisms, policy
changes and measurable commitments that turn
announcements into
reality. | 
