The COP28 declaration on food and agriculture

The COP28 declaration on food and agriculture

Rituraj Phukan

A new declaration on transforming food systems was signed by world leaders at the 28^th United Nations Climate Conference (COP28) in Dubai last December. This was the first resolution to address the relationship between food and climate change under the UNFCCC process.

The declaration recognized the fact that unprecedented adverse climate impacts are increasingly threatening the resilience of agriculture and food systems as well as the ability of many, especially the most vulnerable, to produce and access food in the face of mounting hunger, malnutrition, and economic stresses.

It also recognized the profound potential of agriculture and food systems to drive powerful and innovative responses to climate change and to unlock shared prosperity for all.

World leaders stressed that any path to fully achieving the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement must include agriculture and food systems and affirmed that agriculture and food systems must urgently adapt and transform in order to respond to the imperatives of climate change. They laid out five objectives for working collectively and expeditiously.

RelatedPosts

A Historical Inquiry into Climate and Environment in Assam

March 5, 2026

Rural Waste Management: The Silent Challenge in India’s Sustainability Journey

March 3, 2026

Mahabahu and HCI in Shillong: NEHU Geography Students Rise to the Challenge of Climate Action

March 2, 2026

Firstly, scaling-up adaptation and resilience activities and responses in order to reduce the vulnerability of all farmers, fisherfolk, and other food producers to the impacts of climate change, including through financial and technical support for solutions, capacity building, infrastructure, and innovations, including early warning systems, that promote sustainable food security, production and nutrition, while conserving, protecting and restoring nature.

The second objective is the promotion of food security and nutrition by increasing efforts to support vulnerable people through approaches such as social protection systems and safety nets, school feeding and public procurement programs, targeted research and innovation, and focusing on the specific needs of women, children and youth, Indigenous Peoples, smallholders, family farmers, local communities and persons with disabilities, among others.

Supporting workers in agriculture and food systems, including women and youth, whose livelihoods are threatened by climate change, to maintain inclusive, decent work, through context-appropriate approaches which could include increasing, adapting and diversifying incomes, was the third objective.

The fourth objective is to strengthen the integrated management of water in agriculture and food systems at all levels to ensure sustainability and reduce adverse impacts on communities that depend on these inter-related areas.

Finally, maximize the climate and environmental benefits – while containing and reducing harmful impacts – associated with agriculture and food systems by conserving, protecting and restoring land and natural ecosystems, enhancing soil health, and biodiversity, and shifting from higher greenhouse gas-emitting practices to more sustainable production and consumption approaches, including by reducing food loss and waste and promoting sustainable aquatic blue foods.

To achieve these aims – according to our own national circumstances – we commit to expedite the integration of agriculture and food systems into our climate action and, simultaneously, to mainstream climate action across our policy agendas and actions related to agriculture and food systems.

Further, towards fulfilling these commitments, world leaders declared their intent to strengthen their respective and shared efforts by 2025. These efforts will be to pursue broad, transparent, and inclusive engagement, as appropriate within national contexts, to integrate agriculture and food systems into National Adaptation Plans, Nationally Determined Contributions, Long-term Strategies, National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans, and other related strategies before the convening of COP30.

They also declared their intent to revisit or orient policies and public support related to agriculture and food systems to promote activities which increase incomes, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and bolster resilience, productivity, livelihoods, nutrition, water efficiency and human, animal and ecosystem health while reducing food loss and waste, and ecosystem loss and degradation.

They will continue to scale-up and enhance access to all forms of finance from the public, philanthropic and private sectors to adapt and transform agriculture and food systems to respond to climate change.

Countries will aim to accelerate and scale science and evidence-based innovations – including local and indigenous knowledge – which increase sustainable productivity and production of agriculture and related emerging domains, promote ecosystem resilience and improve livelihoods, including for rural communities, smallholders, family farmers and other producers. The leaders also resolved to strengthen the rules-based, non-discriminatory, open, fair, inclusive, equitable and transparent multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization at its core.

The world leader declared that with seven years remaining to achieve our shared goals, they intended to strengthen collaboration among different ministries including agriculture, climate, energy, environment, finance, and health and with diverse stakeholders to achieve the articulated objectives and efforts, and as appropriate within national contexts.

The world leaders also reaffirmed their respective commitments, collective and individual, to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, and the Sharm El Sheikh Joint Work on implementation of climate action in agriculture and food security, as well as the UN Food Systems Summit.

To maintain momentum, leaders declared their intent to benefit from relevant regional and global convenings in order to share experiences and to accelerate national and collaborative action, review collective progress at COP29 with a view to considering next steps in 2025 and beyond.

Rituraj Phukan is an environmental activist and writer based in Assam, a biodiversity rich, climate impacted province in the far east of India. A commerce graduate, he quit his government job to begin a lifelong engagement with nature, travelling, writing and teaching students about the environment, wildlife and climate change. He is Secretary General of Green Guard Nature Organization, a grassroots civil society group working with fringe forest communities to explore and establish sustainable solutions for management of man-animal conflict. He also serves as the Chief Operating Officer of Walk For Water, a group that is leading a global water conservation movement with a mission to provide universal accessibility to safe water. Rituraj is a Climate Reality Leader trained at Istanbul 2013 and is a Mentor and District Manager with The Climate Reality Project India. Rituraj was a member of the International Antarctic Expedition led by Polar explorer Robert Swan, the first man to have walked to both the poles, in 2013, completing a personal leadership and environment sustainability program called ‘Leadership on the Edge.’ He has also travelled to the Canadian Arctic on an Earthwatch expedition called ‘Climate Change at the Arctic’s Edge’ to participate in ongoing citizen science research about the impacts of global warming on the fragile arctic ecosystems, while based at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre. As the Assam Coordinator for Kids For Tigers, the Sanctuary Nature Foundation initiative for students, he works with schools to sensitize students about the connection between tigers, their forest habitat, climate change and conservation needs and consequences.

Rituraj is the Climate Editor of MAHABAHU

Mahabahu.com is an Online Magazine with collection of premium Assamese and English articles and posts with cultural base and modern thinking.  You can send your articles to editor@mahabahu.com / editor@mahabahoo.com (For Assamese article, Unicode font is necessary) Images from different sources.