At UN Biodiversity COP16, FAO steers countries to find solutions in agrifood systems | FAO News

Cali, Colombia – Closing the gap between ambition & implementation is the next frontier in the struggle to conserve the vast array of plant & animal species comprising life on earth & the habitats they rely on, including our own.

Currently, one out of every 11 people in the world is experiencing hunger, & projections show that 585 million people will be chronically undernourished by 2030. Without biodiversity, we risk our capacity to feed the world sustainably.

At this year’s COP16 Biodiversity Conference, the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is focused on helping Members move from pledges to plans. While biodiversity goals are often associated with exotic animals, pristine wilderness & nature preservation zones, the key to global success is to ensure peace with nature by not only protecting but ensuring the sustainable management of biodiversity in  agriculture & food systems.

“Agrifood systems solutions are absolutely central to facing the big challenges related to climate, biodiversity & land management,” says Director Kaveh Zahedi, Director of FAO’s Office of Climate Change, Biodiversity & Environment. “They need to be prioritized in multilateral environmental agreements, receive more resources in both qualitative & quantitative terms, & become fully integrated into national planning processes & strategies.”

The previous COP15, held in Kunming, China & Montreal, Canada, marked a watershed moment as 196 countries agreed on 23 targets for 2030 & four broader goals for 2050. Perhaps as important, & certainly so for FAO, was the fact that global leaders recognized the central role of the sustainable use of biodiversity, including through agriculture, pushing the policy & action frontier beyond conservation alone.
“Cali is the moment where this immense ambition has to turn into concrete plans, & we have to push to make sure the emphasis on using agriculture to promote biodiversity stays at centre stage,” Zahedi says.

Agrifood sectors – crop & livestock production, forestry, fisheries & aquaculture – are related in one way or another to all the targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). The publication Delivering on the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework through agrifood systems, released this week, describes some of the links between each of the GBF targets & agrifood systems. This ranges from the targets on ecosystem restoration, invasive alien species & pollution to those addressing genetic resources for food & agriculture, soil health & pollination.

The conservation & sustainable use of biodiversity is & has always been at the core of FAO’s mandate. FAO’s work on biodiversity is guided by its Strategy on Mainstreaming Biodiversity across Agricultural Sectors & Action Plan & focuses on building resilient agrifood systems that can address food insecurity & malnutrition, in all its forms.

FAO is the custodian agency for monitoring around 25 headline, component & complementary indicators of the GBF.

Some FAO initiatives at COP16

FAO is engaged in a number of events & presentations during the COP16 summit, including the launch of a Germany-funded project in support of AFR100, a project aimed at restoring 100 million hectares of degraded land in Africa by 2030.

A special event celebrating Colombia’s ratification of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food & Agriculture, was held in Cali on 22 October 2024. Colombia thus becomes the 153rd contracting party of the Treaty.
Restoration Day on 30th October, part of the UN’s Decade on Ecosystem Restoration agenda, will feature the launch of the Guidelines on Target 2.

FAO also gives Members technical assistance with their National Biodiversity Strategies & Action Plans, known as NBSAPs. ensuring the integration of agrifood policies & practices.  The Organization has been assisting 40 countries so far & is committed to expanding that support, including to cover the implementation & monitoring phases.

On 30 October, during the High-Level Session when more than 100 ministers from around the world are in discussion, FAO, together with the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, are launching the Agri-NBSAPs Support Initiative. The initiative will focus on 15 countries & help them identify advanced financial tools, schemes & mechanisms & innovative policy instruments that incentivize biodiversity-friendly practices across agrifood systems & measure their impact on biodiversity & socio-economic outcomes, thus accelerating the implementation of the GBF.

FAO will also publish a new brief, Biodiversity Impacts of Nationally Determined Contributions Actions in Agrifood Systems, which examines how actions taken to pursue climate adaptation & mitigation goals through agrifood systems can impact biodiversity, & how to identify synergies & co-benefits between these highly interconnected areas of work.

Other publications include guidance & information on ecosystem restoration, land use planning, the role of protection, conservation & sustainable management of forests, & a series demonstrating how FAO works with the Global Environment Facility to access investment resources.

FAO’s main messages

It is essential that stakeholders gathered in Cali capitalize on COP15’s agreements & seize opportunities to integrate agrifood systems in their biodiversity planning & policy frameworks.

Agrifood systems solutions are climate, biodiversity & land solutions, offering a way to tackle major interlinked challenges facing people & the planet today. They need to be prioritized in multilateral environmental agreements & fully integrated into national planning processes & strategies. More & more effective finance, almost certainly more than $1 trillion, will be needed to bolster biodiversity & climate actions, & targeting agrifood system transformation is critical.

At the same time, scaling up agrifood system solutions, through enabling policies, innovation & technologies, is fundamental to reach smallholder farmers & producers. Agrifood system transformation must be equitable, inclusive & gender-responsive for maximum impact.

Agrifood systems are also complex & offer a wide range of win-win solutions on the ground. FAO’s Zahedi points to soil restoration as an example promising outcomes with powerful utility for both humans & the environment: Effective interventions on the world’s degraded lands – a third of the total – can boost species richness, enhance carbon sequestration & raise crop yields.