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	We cannot afford another lost year for food and climate action by Emile Frison, Nada Al-Nashif IPES Food, OHCHR   May 2024   We cannot afford another lost year for food and climate action, by Emile Frison for IPES Food   Food systems – encompassing the entirety of activities spanning from agricultural production on farm to processing, distribution, consumption and disposal – are responsible for fully a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. At 18 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent, that’s more than the annual emissions of the USA and China combined.   Additionally, they contribute significantly to fossil fuel consumption, accounting for 15 percent of total usage.   Though these food systems emissions may be complicated, dispersed, and inconvenient, they cannot be ignored. According to an influential paper in Science: “even if fossil fuel emissions were eliminated immediately, emissions from the global food system alone would make it impossible to limit warming to 1.5°C and difficult even to realize the 2°C target”.   No plan exists to tackle the “missing third” of the greenhouse gas pie from global food chains. The declarations made at COP28 climate conference in Dubai did not translate into any binding agreements or targets set; nor is there even a plan to make a plan.   The final Global Stocktake text that emerged as the conclusion of COP28 negotiations did not mention action to tackle agricultural emissions or food system transformation.   Though it did for the first time “recognize the fundamental priority of safeguarding food security and ending hunger, and the particular vulnerabilities of food production systems” in relation to adapting to climate change.   This marked an important, if insufficient, acknowledgement of the major impacts that extreme weather and hotter temperatures are beginning to exert on farmers and food security.   This stocktake text was the culmination of a process of analyzing every nation’s plans (‘nationally declared contributions’) to meet the Paris Agreement – which collectively showed current efforts leading to a temperature rise up to 1.4C above the 1.5C threshold, far short of the Paris goals.   Governments’ pledged actions on food systems were markedly weak and fragmented. What plans do exist lack joined-up approaches that span the whole food system, lack coordination between local, regional, and national levels of government, and lack measurable commitments.   For example, governments have shown a remarkable reluctance to join up supply-side and demand-side practices in order to drive more sustainable diets and food systems. Only two countries included measures to shift to sustainable food production and consumption and to reduce loss and waste: Liberia and Malawi.   The negotiated Global Stocktake agreement serves as a teacher’s warning to ‘go back and redo your homework’. The glaring omission of food systems emissions among the list of points to improve and resubmit is therefore a dangerous oversight and a stark betrayal of urgency. It leaves a gaping black hole just as the 1.5C global heating target hangs in jeopardy.   What needs to happen?   Food systems can be admittedly complex for policy-makers to shift. Agri-food lobbies, every bit as powerful as fossil fuels lobbies, exert enormous influence over politicians.   Food systems can impinge upon numerous interlocked policy priorities – not only climate but health, food security, environment, labor, livelihoods, economy and trade. Furthermore, food systems get personal, touching on sensitive issues of culture and identity, and are rapidly becoming embroiled in culture wars, creating a febrile environment for rational policy making.   Nevertheless, perhaps more than for other polluting industries, a number of sustainable solutions are readily available for food systems. These could generate not only major GHG reductions in a short time, but also a wide range of social, health, economic, and environmental benefits.   Halving food loss and waste across the entire supply chain could mitigate up to 8 percent of annual global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Well-managed changes to agricultural production practices could mitigate about 18 percent of GHG emissions, while building soil fertility, protecting ecosystems, and strengthening resilience to climate shocks.   Studies have shown that transitioning to sustainable, healthy diets and halving global industrial meat production and consumption could mitigate a further 8 percent, while improving health and reducing pressures on land and ecosystems.   Although national governments are falling short, a number of cities and regional governments are succeeding in pioneering policies on food and climate change while providing broader social and environmental advantages – showing that it is possible. Their climate pledges go 35 percent above and beyond the emissions cuts committed by national governments—and provide a blueprint for effective action on food and climate, in which social justice, participation, and accountability are put at the heart of climate action.   From mega-cities to small towns, local governments are fostering close connections with their citizens and putting health and social justice at the heart of their food and climate policies, while protecting vulnerable communities.   For example, the mega-city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, protects forests and farms in nearby rural districts from urban development, trains family farmers in sustainable practices, and finds urban buyers for their fresh organic produce: The program is protecting the Atlantic Forest, the most threatened biome in Brazil.   A number of cities have been steadily steering their citizens toward more sustainable and healthy diets, including places like Copenhagen and New York City—whose program of providing plant-based meals as a default in its public hospitals racked up a 36 percent reduction in carbon emissions associated with food in the first year (soon to be followed by the city’s schools, senior centers, homeless shelters, and even jails).   Approaching food and farming policy in a holistic, cross-cutting way could prove the key to unlocking action and funding on the missing third.   Food systems are not just carbon machines, and should not be measured by carbon metrics alone. Beyond climate, food systems also require deep transformation for reasons of hunger and ill health, biodiversity and pollution crises, deteriorating livelihoods, inflation, and labor abuse.   We know it is the industrialized food system – characterized by monocultures, industrial livestock, high-fertilizer and chemical use, processing, long food chains, and food waste – that is largely responsible for food systems emissions.   We must therefore redesign our food and farming systems, based on ecological principles, to significantly reduce GHG emissions and sequester carbon in healthy ecosystems.   Agroecology – an ecologically, socially and economically sustainable approach to food and farming – demonstrates numerous agronomic, social, and economic benefits that will prove paramount to our ability to mitigate emissions while adapting to a rapidly changing climate.   It has comparatively minimal GHG emissions and can sequester significant amounts of carbon. And by promoting diversity, resilience, social values, cultural practices, and low resource use, it can increase the resilience of farms, landscapes, and food chains.   Transformation   To be clear, gradualist approaches aimed at merely making minor adjustments to the industrial food system will not be enough to close the loophole of the missing third of greenhouse gasses by 2030, nor to get us off the high-pollution, high-fossil-fuel, high-hunger track we’re on. Well-meaning but incrementalist initiatives within the current industrial food paradigm are emerging just as rapidly as the increasing prominence of food systems in climate negotiations.   Tweaking cows’ diets, tinkering with plant breeding, cellular meat, digital farming—these are all garnering attention and money at the expense of the major changes needed. (These are often accompanied by a whole world of appealing but misleading jargon – ‘climate smart’, ‘nature-based’, ‘precision agriculture’.)   The FAO’s 1.5C Roadmap, in its ambition to align food systems with the 1.5°C threshold while eradicating chronic hunger by 2030, exemplifies just such an approach that primarily focuses on marginal enhancements and agricultural efficiency gains, rather than challenging the fundamentals of the current inequitable system.   Lacking a clear signal to restructure food systems around diversity, circularity, and agroecology, the FAO’s prescriptions are unlikely to sufficiently shift the trajectory on the missing third of GHG emissions.   Nor are its prescriptions likely to turn the dial on the power dynamics of the BigAg corporations who are squeezing farmers out of a living and funneling crops into livestock feed, biofuels and ultra-processed foods instead of feeding those in hunger.   While it may have taken 28 years for food systems to secure their place on the COP agenda, we now have only a fraction of that time to move to action to transform food systems and begin closing the greenhouse gas loophole. With the goal of restricting global warming to 1.5 degrees hanging in precarious balance, ignoring climate action on food systems is no longer an option.   * Emile Frison is a member of the IPES-Food panel, a senior advisor to the Agroecology Coalition, and an expert on agroecology and agricultural biodiversity who has headed global research-for-development organisation Bioversity International for ten years.   http://ipes-food.org/we-cannot-afford-another-lost-year-for-food-and-climate-action/   Mar. 2024   Measures for minimizing the adverse impact of climate change on the full realization of the right to food, by Nada Al-Nashif United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights at the 55th session of the UN Human Rights Council:   The triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss continues to generate massive human rights violations around the world.   It contributes to conflicts that batter people's lives and rights. To displacement, which drives them from their homes and lands. And to hunger and starvation that create unbearable suffering, stunt children's growth, making both children and adults more vulnerable to disease –ultimately, destroying lives and livelihoods.   Our world has the capacity to feed everyone. No-one in this 21st century should have to go hungry. And yet, despite the world's pledge to create a world free of hunger by 2030, over 783 million people – over 9% of the world's population – endured chronic hunger last year, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). More than 333 million people faced acute levels of food insecurity – an increase of almost 200 million compared with pre-pandemic levels. Others faced famine, and even starvation. So, instead of meeting our Sustainable Development Goal of zero hunger by 2030, FAO estimates that in 2030, despite some progress, at least 600 million people will still be suffering from hunger. Climate change is among the chief drivers of this hunger crisis.   Sudden and slow-onset events, such as heatwaves, droughts, sea-level rise, and flooding wreak havoc on crops and systems for producing and delivering all food – generating loss and damage for the communities that support and depend on them.   When the High Commissioner visited Iraq last year, he witnessed first-hand how the worst drought in 40 years has created a crisis of water scarcity, destroyed livelihoods and traditions that are dependent on agriculture and fishing, and turned parts of the ancient fertile crescent – which has been a lush food source for over 10,000 years – into crumbling, barren dust.   The deterioration of local food systems and livelihoods dependent on a safe and stable climate can drive displacement. Our research in the Sahel found that diminishing access to food and livelihoods in agriculture, pastoralism and fishing acted as a driver of migration. It highlighted gendered impacts of climate change while underscoring that building climate resilience, including through social protection systems, can often reduce the risk of forced displacement.   Unjust systems of land distribution also need to be addressed. States need to recognize the rights of Indigenous Peoples, of peasants, of those in situations of poverty and vulnerability, other groups also, to own, access, and sustainably use lands and resources, and adopt agrarian reform measures as and where appropriate.   The climate emergency is upon us. The dystopian future, a world with suffering and injustice that we could not have imagined, is now. The outcome of the first global stocktake under the Paris Agreement, adopted in December at the 28th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, recognized the priority of safeguarding food security, given the vulnerability of food production systems to the adverse impacts of climate change. This acknowledgment is crucial. And it must be followed by action.   Our report A/HRC/55/37 details human rights-based measures that can help to minimize the impacts of climate change on people's right to food and of current food systems on climate change. Social and economic systems intersect with climate change to generate disproportionate food insecurity for specific groups. The report demonstrates how human rights measures, including within food systems, can address this loss and damage caused by climate change.   First, we need rights-based action to mitigate climate change starting with a transition to sustainable, equitable and climate-resilient food systems and we need to prevent industrial agricultural production from further fuelling climate change. The current economic paradigm creates a vicious cycle: climate impacts deepen food insecurity, while overreliance on industrial food systems exacerbates climate change and the vulnerability of communities.   Concretely, we need measures to reduce food systems emissions including with respect to production, consumption, diet, and food waste and loss. These measures must be fair, taking into account the current and historical responsibility of States and businesses in causing climate change, as well as their respective capacities for action.   Second, to better protect people impacted by climate change, all countries need to advance universal social protection. The climate crisis clearly exacerbates patterns of poverty, of inequalities and of food insecurity. And social protection can ensure people continue to have access to quality food, supporting cohesive and resilient societies in the face of crisis.   Third, it is crucial to ensure that businesses act responsibly to address climate change and its impact on the right to food. The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights require accountability. They need to be applied by States and businesses, ensuring respect for all human rights throughout their business operations and value chains.   Fourth, financing must be mobilized, and appropriate economic and trade policies adopted to fulfil the right to food. It is crucial to safeguard the fiscal space for key investments in human rights. Currently, some 3.3 billion people – almost half of humanity – live in countries that spend more money paying interest on their debts than on education or health. International financial institutions are in need of swift reforms, as we have often said. And States need to cooperate to enable economic policies that can protect the right to food.   Fifth, as the Council and the General Assembly have emphatically declared, all people have a right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Transitioning to sustainable food systems that are better grounded in natural processes can help to ensure sustainable food security for all. Examples include agroecology; regenerative agriculture; soil rehabilitation techniques; and management of fisheries to sustain healthy and resilient ecosystems. Such approaches preserve biodiversity, reduce the use of chemicals and fossil fuels, and produce healthier food.   Several States have shared examples, including financial schemes to boost local food production by cooperatives; promotion of agroecology and collective custody of biocultural heritage, as part of national action to adapt to climate change; and efforts to empower fisheries communities to pursue sustainable livelihoods. And these are all encouraging steps.   We are the generation with the most powerful technological tools yet. As such, we have the ability to reverse this trend. I call on all Governments to meet their responsibility and act now to realise the universal right to food and uphold the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Let us join forces in a spirit of solidarity and shared humanity.   http://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2024/03/deputy-presents-offices-report-climate-change-and-right-food Visit the related web page
	Climate change creates serious health hazards for 70 per cent of the world’s workers by UN News, LSE , ILO, agencies   Nov. 2024   Leaders of the world’s biggest economies gathered for the G20 in Brazil must agree to provide the finance that the world’s poorest need to tackle the climate crisis or face “economic carnage”, the UN has warned.   The G20 nations are about to gather in Brazil for two days of talks, while many of their ministers remain in Azerbaijan where crucial negotiations at the Cop29 climate crisis summit have stalled. Rich countries’ governments have not yet put forward the offers of hundreds of billions of dollars in financial aid that economists say are needed to help poorer countries cut their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of extreme weather.   Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, called on the G20 leaders to break the logjam. “The G20 was created to tackle problems that no one country or group of countries can tackle alone. On that basis, the global climate crisis should be order of business number one, in Rio,” he said.   “Climate impacts are already ripping shreds out of every G20 economy, wrecking lives, pummelling supply chains and food prices, and fanning inflation. Bolder climate action is basic self-preservation for every G20 economy. Without rapid cuts in emissions, no G20 economy will be spared from climate-driven economic carnage,” he warned.   The G20 must also discuss debt relief, he added, as many poor countries are unable to take measures to protect themselves from climate breakdown while they are already struggling with debt servicing costs that have been pushed higher by interest rate rises.   “In turbulent times and a fracturing world, G20 leaders must signal loud and clear that international cooperation is still the best and only chance humanity has to survive global heating,” he added. “There is no other way.”   Next year’s Cop will be held in Brazil, which is also hosting this year’s G20. The country’s president, Lula da Silva, is anticipated to push G20 leaders in Rio to agree not only new climate finance for less developed countries but also more stringent emissions targets for their own economies, as these need to be delivered by February, according to UN rules, and will form the main outcome of Cop30 next November.   http://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/new-report-recommends-cop29-negotiations-on-climate-finance-should-focus-on-mobilising-1-trillion-per-year-for-developing-countries-by-2030/ http://globalsolidaritylevies.org/cop29-global-solidarity-levies-task-force-progress-report-unveils-options-for-solidarity-levies/ http://www.iied.org/worlds-least-developed-countries-spend-twice-much-servicing-debts-they-receive-climate-finance   Apr. 2024   Climate change creates serious health hazards for 70 per cent of the world’s workers, reports the International Labour Organization (ILO)   A “staggering” number of workers, amounting to more than 70 per cent of the global workforce, are likely to be exposed to climate-change-related health hazards, and existing occupational safety and health (OSH) protections are struggling to keep up with the resulting risks, according to a new report by the International Labour Organization (ILO).   The report, Ensuring safety and health at work in a changing climate , says that climate change is already having a serious impact on the safety and health of workers in all regions of the world. The ILO estimates that more than 2.4 billion workers (out of a global workforce of 3.4 billion) are likely to be exposed to excessive heat at some point during their work, according to the most recent figures available (2020).   When calculated as a share of the global workforce, the proportion has increased from 65.5 per cent to 70.9 per cent since 2000.   In addition, the report estimates that 18,970 lives and 2.09 million disability-adjusted life years are lost annually due to the 22.87 million occupational injuries, which are attributable to excessive heat.   This is not to mention the 26.2 million people worldwide living with chronic kidney disease linked to workplace heat stress (2020 figures).   The impact of climate change on workers goes well beyond exposure to excessive heat, the report says, creating a “cocktail of hazards”, which result in a range of dangerous health conditions.   The report notes that numerous health conditions in workers have been linked to climate change, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory illnesses, kidney disfunction and mental health conditions. The impact includes:   1.6 billion workers exposed to UV radiation, with more than 18,960 work-related deaths annually from nonmelanoma skin cancer. 1.6 billion likely to be exposed to workplace air pollution, resulting in up to 860,000 work-related deaths among outdoor workers annually.   Over 870 million workers in agriculture, likely to be exposed to pesticides, with more than 300,000 deaths attributed to pesticide poisoning annually. 15,000 work-related deaths every year due to exposure to parasitic and vector-borne diseases.   “It’s clear that climate change is already creating significant additional health hazards for workers,” said Manal Azzi, Occupational health and safety lead at the ILO. “It is essential that we heed these warnings.   Occupational safety and health considerations must be become part of our climate change responses – both policies and actions. Working in safe and healthy environments is recognized as one of the ILO’s fundamental principles and rights at work. We must deliver on that commitment in relation to climate change, just as in every other aspect of work.”   The report also explores current country responses, including revising or creating new legislation, regulations and guidance, and improving climate mitigation strategies – such as energy efficiency measures – in working environments.   http://www.ilo.org/resource/news/more-workers-ever-are-losing-fight-against-heat-stress http://www.ilo.org/resource/news/climate-change-creates-cocktail-serious-health-hazards-70-cent-worlds http://wmo.int/media/news/un-secretary-general-issues-call-action-extreme-heat-0 Visit the related web page
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