Action Plan on Climate Change

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has launched an Action Plan designed to support the implementation of its ambitious Strategy on Climate Change 2022-2031 in July 2023. The Strategy, which was endorsed in June 2022 by FAO’s executive body, the Council, envisages agrifood systems as sustainable, inclusive, resilient and adaptive to climate change. 

Global agrifood systems are currently responsible for about a third of total greenhouse gas emissions. They are also one of the major victims of the climate crisis. But agrifood systems also offer many solutions for confronting this climate crisis, ranging from building resilience and adaptation to mitigation and sequestration.

The Strategy aims to scale up the visibility, uptake and investment in these solution by contributing to adaptive, resilient low-emission economies “while providing sufficient, safe and nutritious foods for healthy diets, as well as other agricultural products and services, for present and future generations, leaving no one behind”.

To guarantee the successful and timely implementation of the Strategy, FAO has developed an Action Plan based on discussions with its FAO Members, so as to ensure that it reflects their needs and priorities as closely as possible.

The Action Plan is based on three pillars: 1) advocacy at global and regional levels; 2) policy support at country level;  3) the scaling-up of climate action on the ground with local actors and vulnerable populations.

As far as the first pillar is concerned, FAO is already stepping up its advocacy efforts in global fora. 

In terms of policy support to FAO Members, the Plan aims to intensify support in the elaboration and implementation of climate commitments, in particular the National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), and nationally determined contributions (NDCs). FAO is active in this area with its Scaling up Climate Ambition on Land Use and Agriculture through nationally determined contributions and National Adaptation Plans (SCALA) programme, which is currently active in twelve countries spread across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The third pillar seeks to bring about a stronger involvement by local stakeholders, with a particular focus on vulnerable groups, such as women and Indigenous People, towards the identification, co-development and adoption of good practices that will ensure greater food security and better livelihoods, as well as to address climate change, biodiversity loss and land degradation.

The Plan associates a series of concrete outputs to all the outcomes and pillars that were endorsed in the Strategy and covers the period 2022-2025, allowing for a mid-term review of its implementation.

(FAO/ile)

Read more on the FAO website