You’ll remember the adventures of Marty McFly travelling back in time. (Yes, ECO is talking about movies – long before Netflix took over our lives.) You’ll remember him struggling to return to his life and trying to fix the problems he had caused in the past.
Well, at Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA), like McFly, we are also facing the past to imagine the future. We are chasing the objective of fixing the climate emergency caused in part by the food systems in place.
A proverb says, “When you don’t know where you’re going, look where you came from”. We come from years of advocacy to make the UNFCCC recognise that agriculture is part of the problem but also part of the solution, which, in 2017 finally led to a COP decision on agriculture; and so the KJWA was born. Since then we’ve had discussion on manure, livestock, soil nutrients, socioeconomic dimensions and food security; 6 workshops (and 2 extra ones), 4 COPs and have come to the understanding that we work better when everyone is included and given a voice (YES, that means observers in the room). Now, after 4 years, Koronivia’s roadmap is coming to an end and a decision on its future is expected at this COP.
Meanwhile, we still face food systems that are not helping limit global warming to 1.5°C. The good news is that we know what we need and where we should be going. Agroecological practices, absolute emissions reductions in the livestock sector (particularly in large-scale factory farming systems), gender-responsive approaches, just transition and increased finance flows are where we need to be headed.
We know our past, we faced our present, it is now time to get back to the future!
The time has come to wrap up all the hours of workshops, reports and negotiations and adopt guidance to inform climate action in agriculture. Let’s add the name “Glasgow” to a significant tool that can help today, to fix the food system problems caused in the past, by advising NDCs, LTSs and climate finance on agriculture.