Author: Megan Dister

Food Systems at COP27

Coming into COP27 commenters hoped this would be the food COP. COP27 did not meet these expectations, but there still were many firsts and movement on the Koronivia Joint Work Program on Agriculture. Before, during, and after COP27 I have been thinking about how food systems fit into the UNFCCC.

Before coming to COP27 I researched blue foods, aquatic fish, plants, and algae, as part of a partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund to help with their Food Systems Pavilion. I researched how blue foods could fit into a country’s Nationally Determined Contributions under the Paris Agreement because investing in blue foods can provide opportunities for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Moreover, gearing up for COP27, parties and observers began agenda setting for negotiations around the Koronivia Joint Work Program on Agriculture. Koronivia is a formal UNFCCC workstream dedicated to agriculture and climate change. It was first established at COP23 and involved a series of workshops on a variety of issues including nutrient use, water, livestock, adaptation, and food security. The workshops finished ahead of COP26, but delegates at COP26 could not come to a decision about the future of Koronivia, so they pushed the decision to COP27.

At COP27 for the first time there was a Food Systems Pavilion along with four other food related pavilions. At the Food Systems Pavilion the organizers hosted a full two weeks’ worth of events exploring food and climate change from many different angles. I assisted with an event on blue foods and climate change. This event helped contextualize the work I completed before COP and brought together diverse panels to talk about opportunities and challenges with this issue.

Additionally. the COP Presidency hosted an Agriculture Day for the first time in COP history. Delegates began Koronivia negotiations, and this agenda item took up the most formal negotiating time during the first week of COP27. The organizers of the Food Pavilion and 100 organizations signed an open letter advocating for a new mandate for Koronivia focused on a food systems approach to agriculture with sustainable food production and discussions of nutrition and diets amongst other ideas. During the negotiations delegates split, with the G77 plus China wanting the whole food systems approach removed and the UK, France, and Switzerland advocating for this approach.

Koronivia negotiations continued until the last minute, and it was the only agenda item where there were interventions during the closing plenary. Nevertheless, the parties finally adopted the text. It includes a four-year plan on agriculture and food security along with an initiative to increase financing to transform agriculture by 2030. Organizers of the Food Systems Pavilion were disappointed at the ultimate Koronivia text, but remained hopeful after so many firsts at COP27. The final text did not reference food systems and did not contain interventions like nutrition and dietary shifts. Despite these shortcomings from the COP27 decision text, COP27 pushed food to the forefront and hopefully will galvanize more work on food and climate change.

 

Exhaustion and Hope at COP27

Touching down in New York City, after a twelve-hour flight from Cairo, my WhatsApp notifications started buzzing. There was a decision on the loss and damage fund. I was incredibly exhausted and disoriented, but hopeful. Something big came out of COP27 and the United States moved, after thirty years of resisting calls for a loss and damage fund. This news right as I came back to the United States was a lovely welcome home and ending to COP27.

This sudden excitement and hopefulness paired with long periods of exhaustion and disorientation sums up the rest of my experience at COP27 as well. Coming into COP27 I did not comprehend its scale, with hundreds of events and 44,000 people navigating a labyrinth of buildings for two weeks straight. It was challenging to navigate the space and sort through the hundreds of negotiations, side events, press conferences, and pavilion events happening simultaneously all day. Before going to COP I did not understand that it is also a conference and trade show bringing together people to discuss issues, technologies, and solutions all related to climate change. Seeing the sheer number of side events and walking through the pavilion spaces filled me with hope to see so many people coming together from across the world to discuss this existential problem facing our planet. I moved from events discussing sustainable governance of aquatic foods, to near term actions in U.S. climate policy, to riverkeeper organizations across the world dealing with harms from dams, to a brief on U.S positions at COP27 from John Kerry, to the role of criminal law in climate action.

But spending time at the negotiations truly made this experience meaningful. I focused mostly on the loss and damage negotiations, so I noticed the power of groups like the Alliance of Small Island States and the G77+China. At each negotiation I scrambled to get the most updated text to follow along and see how even just one word could make one party unwilling to support a document. The process moved incredibly slowly, and delegates were often repetitive, but through patiently waiting I also heard how some parties’ positions began to shift, while others dug into their positions

During one afternoon one of my classmates heard about a Santiago Network negotiation that was added to the calendar last minute and was open to observers. I rushed across the COP27 grounds to arrive at a huge huddle of delegates in one corner of the room. I waited for about 20 minutes and then suddenly delegates began to clap. They took their seats and shared with the co-chair that they had agreed on text to operationalize the Santiago Network, a technical assistance network for loss and damage from climate change. Moments like this made me hopeful that this process was working, and some important global climate action would come out of COP27.

What is Global Climate Action?

I have been thinking about climate change almost as long as I can remember. Growing up in Norfolk, Virginia I remember floods and hurricanes sweeping through my neighborhood. I remember adults talking about how these natural disasters are just getting worse. As I got older, I began to better understand what climate change is and began to feel a certain existential dread paired with a strong motivation to act. As a high schooler participating in model United Nations, I dreamed about what it would be like to work on a global scale to tackle these wicked problems. Then several weeks ago, on a trip to Alaska I felt these same strong emotions that motivated me as a child. On a hike to a glacier, I walked past the years that showed how quickly the glacier has retreated. I felt a visceral sense of urgency for climate action.

These experiences and emotions are what have brought me to COP27. Writing this blog enroute from Cairo to Sharm El Sheikh I am also full of many emotions. Before heading to Sharm El Sheikh I spent about a day with a close friend in Cairo. Talking with her, her parents, and friends about COP27 made me reflect on what a privilege it is for me to be able to attend this conference. There is so much hope for global action on climate change, and hope that people in my generation or younger will lead the way to push forward on aggressive climate action. But also, so much skepticism about what will come out of COP27. Talking to people before my trip, and before I even took this class, I did not know and many people I talk with do not know much about the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change or even what COP stands for. To the general public these high-level negotiations are often confusing and misunderstood. Yet the impacts of climate change are felt by so many people around the globe.

Through this class and attending COP27 I hope to be able better explain what these global actions and negotiations look like. I hope to be able to better understand the mechanisms for climate action on a global scale. I also want to take away stories from people I meet here about how local or regional climate action fits into these global dialogues. All of these hopes and ideas about COP27 are also a bit overwhelming. I want to take advantage of my time here, and learn as much as I can, while preserving my energy and not burning out too soon. I look forward to partnering with the Environmental Defense Fund and helping with their Food Systems Pavilion. I also look forward to seeing some of the official negotiations and the way these formal discussions move forward with so many actors participating at once. Throughout this trip I want to continue to learn and be reflective about how we may be able to move forward with global climate action.

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