REFLECTIONS ON COP 27: OUTCOMES, CHALLENGES, AND NEW ISSUES FOR EUROPEAN AGRI-FOOD RESEARCH AND POLICY

Climate change poses a serious threat to peoples’ livelihoods and to ecosystems across the globe. It is among several current crises which require concerted efforts and collaboration at the international level. The response to climate change at the international level is coordinated under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Each year, delegates from over 190 countries meet at the Conference of the Parties (COP) to discuss and to promote the mitigation of climate change, the adaptation to a changing climate, and the support given to developing countries. The 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) took place in Sharm El-Sheikh (Egypt) from 6 to 18 November 2022.

The 2022 summit was set against a backdrop of record-high levels of hunger and multi-year droughts that continue to grip many parts of the African continent, in particular. Given this challenging context, it was timely that agriculture and food security – thought to have been at risk of dropping off the climate talks’ agenda – were given a stronger mandate and a four-year lease of life through the “Koronivia work programme”. Indeed, the COP27 summit made history by including for the first time, food, nature-based solutions and the right to a healthy environment in an overarching COP “cover decision.”

The final decision text recognises “the fundamental priority of safeguarding food security and ending hunger”, and the vulnerability of food production to climate change. It also “acknowledges that climate change exacerbates the global food crisis and vice versa, particularly in developing countries”. Moreover, the preamble of the cover text, known as the Sharm El-Sheikh Implementation Plan, notes “the importance of transition to sustainable lifestyles and sustainable patterns of consumption and production for efforts to address climate change”.

The COP and other large international conferences dedicated to climate change and to biodiversity are drawing major international roadmaps and policy-related proposals that are being endorsed by all European countries and the European Commission, and are of high importance for EURAGRI members in terms of research priorities and policy development.

This workshop aims at sharing analyses of the outcomes and challenges emerging from the COP 27 roadmaps and the relationships between the climate and biodiversity objectives and food production and quality objectives and at reviewing how these objectives are endorsed by the various EURAGRI members and implemented in their strategic plans.