A mounting fear looms in agrifood systems as climate change wreaks havoc, causing loss and damage. A freshly released report by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) at the UN Climate Conference COP28 in Dubai asserts that decisive actions, coupled with increased financing, are imperative to confront the vulnerabilities faced by these systems.
This revelation follows a significant breakthrough at COP28, where world leaders reached a pivotal deal to operationalise the Loss and Damage Fund, established during COP27. Several nations have already made around $300 million pledges to contribute to this fund.
The FAO report, offering a comprehensive analysis of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), underscores that approximately one-third of current climate action plans explicitly address loss and damage. Intriguingly, agriculture emerges as the sector most severely impacted despite its pivotal role in global agrifood systems.
While agriculture encompasses production, distribution, and consumption within global agrifood systems, discussions around loss and damage have historically centred on something other than this critical sector. However, communities relying on agrifood systems for their livelihoods grapple with acute challenges such as poverty, food insecurity, and limited access to services.
The study accentuates the urgent need for targeted initiatives to address vulnerabilities in agrifood systems, recognising their central role in livelihoods and sustainable development. The agrifood sector, employing over 866 million people globally and boasting a turnover of $3.6 trillion in 2020, underscores its economic significance.
FAO Director-General QU Dongyu commended the historic agreement at COP28. He said that the pledges represented a shared acknowledgment of the urgent moral imperative to address the challenges of climate change.
Developing nations, at the forefront of climate change's impacts, had persistently advocated for establishing the Loss and Damage Fund, given their vulnerability to extreme weather events like droughts, floods, and rising seas.
The report sheds light on the economic burden of losses and damages in agrifood systems, indicating that agricultural losses accounted for an average of 23 percent of the total impact of disasters between 2007 and 2022. Droughts caused over 65 percent of losses in the agriculture sector during this period, translating to an estimated $3.8 trillion worth of crops and livestock production lost in the last 30 years.
The authors anticipate that climate events will exacerbate loss and damage, affecting productivity, efficiency, and the livelihoods of those dependent on agrifood systems. They stress the need to enhance methodologies for assessing negative impacts, emphasising the inadequacy of current methods in capturing slow-onset events and non-economic dimensions of loss and damage.
Financial support emerges as a crucial factor, with the study noting that current levels of tracked climate finance fall short of potential needs for agrifood systems. Additionally, the lack of specific data on financial needs for loss and damage poses a challenge, warranting targeted solutions.
Looking ahead, the report proposes a series of actions to mitigate the impact of loss and damage in agrifood systems, advocating for international collaboration and stronger partnerships. These include clarifying the meaning of loss and damage for national agrifood systems, enhancing climate risk assessment, investing in data collection and research, implementing adaptation measures, strengthening emergency response, and adopting a recovery approach based on "building back better."
As the spectre of climate change surpasses adaptation limits, the report emphasises the increasing importance of spotlighting agriculture as a vulnerable sector in global efforts to build resilient and sustainable food systems.
Key findings from the FAO researchers' analysis of NDCs include a growing recognition of loss and damage, with over one-third of countries explicitly mentioning it in their commitments. Geographically, middle-income nations in Latin America, the Caribbean, East Asia, the Pacific, and Europe and Central Asia feature prominently in addressing loss and damage. Agriculture is the most affected sector, with 40 percent of countries reporting economic losses explicitly linked to it. The distinction between economic and non-economic losses reveals that 33 percent of non-economic losses among reporting countries are related to the agricultural sector. Extreme weather events dominate the drivers of economic losses, with 37 percent of mentions related to the agriculture sector, highlighting the multifaceted impact of climate change on communities.
