Agriculture and food were very much on the menu at COP28 in Dubai, with both voluntary pledges and negotiated texts beginning to reflect their central role in climate change.

The global stocktake – the “temperature check” of the Paris Agreement – was the primary focus for many at the summit.

But, in addition to the headline agreement to “transition away from fossil fuels”, the stocktake marked the first time that food was mentioned in a major UN climate change negotiated text.

The links between climate change and biodiversity loss also featured throughout the two weeks of negotiations, with several of the major texts referencing the impacts that each has on the other.

Deforestation garnered less attention at COP28 than it had in recent years, but the summit still saw Brazil’s proposal of a new “tropical forests forever” fund.

A pledge on food and agriculture signed by nearly 160 countries was a major feature in the early days of the summit attended by world leaders.

A range of other pledges covering everything from mangrove protection to methane reduction were spread across the two weeks of COP28.

But failure to agree on a text for the Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on implementation of climate action on agriculture and food security was a blemish on the summit from a food-systems perspective, with observers and parties both lamenting the lack of progress a full year into the work’s four-year mandate.

Here, Carbon Brief provides in-depth analysis of all the key outcomes for food, land use and nature in Dubai.

Food, land and nature in COP28 texts

Global stocktake

Ahead of COP28, all eyes were on the first-ever global stocktake (GST).

As part of the Paris Agreement, countries agreed to assess their progress towards climate goals every five years. The review also allows countries to identify gaps in the world’s collective climate action and take steps to correct the global trajectory.

It is a key part of the Paris Agreement’s “ratchet mechanism” for increasing climate ambition.

The summit saw 12 iterations of texts relating to the GST.

The mention of food in the GST was a “landmark moment”, Clement Metivier, acting head of international advocacy at WWF-UK, told Carbon Brief.

Not including food systems – which are responsible for nearly one-third of global emissions – would have been a “missed opportunity”, Metivier added.

But the opportunity was nearly missed, with most mentions of food systems removed in the second set of GST “building blocks”, released on 5 December. Getting food back into the final text took a “true push” from both civil society and governments, Metivier said.

The final text includes six mentions of “food” – two in the preamble and four in the section on adaptation.

Section 55 of the global stocktake addresses resilient food systems. Source: UNFCCC

However, food does not feature at all in the mitigation section of the GST. Patty Fong, programme manager at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, told Carbon Brief:

“It’s a missed opportunity, given all the focus on fossil fuels, that we didn’t progress as much as we should have [on mitigation in food systems].

“When you look at the specific texts, the ‘transition away from fossil fuels’ refers specifically to energy systems. So this means they’re not addressing where the real expansion is – and where they actually see the growth market – the expansion of oil and gas in the petrochemical sector.”

In addition to the references to food, the global stocktake text references “nature” eight times and “biodiversity” five times.

It “underlines the urgent need” to address the “interlinked global crises of climate change and biodiversity loss”. This mirrors language included in the COP27 Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan.

The text also says that climate change and nature targets should be achieved “in line” with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, agreed at the COP15 nature summit in 2022. This is important, Fong said, because that framework contains stronger language around sustainable agriculture approaches than the GST.

The global stocktake “emphasises” that halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation by 2030 will be key to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement – the first time such a pledge has garnered formal recognition under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

It also “notes” the need for “enhanced support and investment, including through financial resources, technology transfer and capacity-building” in order to meet the deforestation goal.

Beyond forests, the GST notes the importance of “ensuring the integrity of all ecosystems”, including the ocean, mountains and the cryosphere. It was crucial that the text included all of those ecosystems, according to Manuel Pulgar Vidal, WWF’s global climate and energy lead.

Pulgar Vidal, who formerly served as Peru’s environment minister and president of COP20, told Carbon Brief:

“There’s a good reference to ecological integrity in the preamble of the current text.”

Rhiannon Niven, a global climate change policy coordinator at BirdLife International, celebrated the inclusion of that term in the GST’s preamble, but said that it should have been included in the operational part of the text as well. She told Carbon Brief:

 “That’s really critical to make sure that [the functionality of ecosystems] happens.”

Niven praised the rights-based approach the text takes towards ecosystem conservation and restoration, as well as its call for a monitoring system to track and evaluate implementation of adaptation measures by 2030. However, the lack of specific finance for these efforts – only a recognition of the “urgent need” to scale up such finance – concerns her, she said.

The final GST text also underlines the “vital importance of protecting, conserving, restoring and sustainably using nature and ecosystems for effective and sustainable climate action”, she added.

On 4 December, while GST negotiations were ongoing, ministers from Colombia, Germany and Granada were among the signatories of an open letter calling for the GST to lead to more collaboration on implementing nature-based solutions and/or ecosystem-based approaches.

Nature-based solutions and ecosystem-based approaches are specifically mentioned in section 55 of the GST, which “encourages” their implementation, alongside other “solutions” such as sustainable agriculture and land-use management.

They also feature under section 63, which “urges” countries to increase ambition and speed-up action to achieve a number of targets by 2030, including accelerating the use of ecosystem-based adaptation and nature-based solutions. (See Nature-based solutions for more on how they featured at COP28.)

The text contains nine mentions of Indigenous peoples – “but it doesn’t address direct financing for them”, Diego Casaes, campaign director for Indigenous rights at Avaaz, said.

Casaes told Carbon Brief that having such language in the GST was important, but called it “very shallow”, noting that it did not adopt some of the language recommended by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

For example, free, prior and informed consent – when Indigenous peoples engage as negotiators in projects impacting their lands and provide their consent – is crucial when implementing infrastructure and energy projects, expanding protected areas or operating carbon markets in Indigenous territories, Casaes told Carbon Brief:

“That right is not included in the text because it creates an obligation that parties very much do not want to see in a climate decision. They prefer to use language that’s much softer and weaker.”

During a Climate Action Network press briefing, Eriel Deranger, executive director of Indigenous Climate Action and member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in northern Alberta, Canada, agreed that the GST should use “a robust language to hold states accountable to meet their goals”. (See Indigenous recognition and rights.)

Helen Biangalen-Magata, Kadaclan Indigenous rights advocate of the Mountain province in the Philippines, explained:

“If we get legal recognition within the GST, [Indigenous peoples] could make it into national reports and plans and see financing flowing to the local level.”

On non-carbon dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gases, the final text calls for “accelerating and substantially reducing” emissions, “in particular methane emissions by 2030”.

A previous GST draft, released on 8 December, had included an option calling upon countries to “take further actions” to reduce non-CO2 emissions “in order to reduce methane emissions globally by at least 30% by 2030 and 40% by 2035”.

It also mentioned reducing nitrous oxide emissions by at least 13% by 2030 and 18% by 2035, and cutting fluorinated gases by at least 81% by 2035.

However, these numerical targets were all removed from the GST by the time the gavel fell. The final stocktake does not specifically mention other non-CO2 gases, aside from methane. (See Methane and non-CO2 gases.)

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Global goal on adaptation

Another main component of the COP28 talks was the global goal on adaptation (GGA).

The GGA is a “framework” that is meant to help guide parties in building resilience to climate change – long a priority for the most climate-vulnerable nations.

Established by the Paris Agreement, the GGA received little notice at UNFCCC negotiations until COP26 in Glasgow. There, it was given a two-year mandate to “jump-start” the goal.

Food, ecosystems and nature featured several times within the GGA.

Section nine of the text “urges” parties to “increase ambition and enhance adaptation action” towards a series of targets, including reducing water scarcity, reducing the impacts of climate change on ecosystems and “increasing sustainable and regenerative production and equitable access to adequate food and nutrition for all”.

The global goal on adaptation “urges” parties to increase their ambition on a series of targets. Source: UNFCCC

The language surrounding food in the adaptation section of the GST “basically mirrors” the language in the GGA, Fong pointed out.

In the GGA, nature-based solutions appear twice in a broadly similar way to their inclusion in the global stocktake.

Section nine calls for parties to accelerate the use of ecosystem-based adaptation and nature-based solutions. And section 14 emphasises that adaptation action should be continuous and guided by the “best available science”, alongside making use of ecosystem-based adaptation and nature-based solutions. 

Nature-based solutions appear in the global stocktake. Source: UNFCCC

Section 14 also recognises the contributions of traditional and Indigenous knowledge. The “worldviews and values” of Indigenous peoples are also referenced in section eight of the agreement.

The GGA “does have good language” on Indigenous knowledge, equity and livelihoods, Fong said. Another section of the text “encourages the ethical and equitable engagement” with Indigenous peoples and “recognises” their roles as stewards of nature. 

The global goal on adaptation recognises the leadership of Indigenous peoples and encourages equity in engagement with them. Source: UNFCCC

The recognition of water and water-related ecosystems in the GST and the GGA was welcomed by Wetlands International, an international civil-society organisation dedicated to conserving and restoring wetlands.

Francesca Antonelli, head of rivers and lakes at Wetlands International, told Carbon Brief:

“Historically, freshwater ecosystems have been quite neglected by these big conventions. This has been the very first [COP with a] focus also on water, which is something we very welcome.”

Overall, Antonelli said that the fact that water-related ecosystems are in the GST and the GGA “creates a favourable condition for these ecosystems to be embedded” into national climate and biodiversity plans.

Both the GST and the GGA also recognise the risks of transboundary climate impacts in nature, while the GGA suggests a “climate-informed transboundary management” to prevent “cascading risks”.

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Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on agriculture and food security

The Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on implementation of climate action on agriculture and food security (SSJW), agreed at COP27 last year, is the only formal UNFCCC workstream to address agriculture and food systems.

SSJW is the successor to the Koronivia joint work for agriculture, which was established at COP23 in Bonn, in 2017.

The goal of the SSJW negotiations at COP28 was to establish a roadmap for the joint work.

There were three main elements to this: to agree on a set of topics for the three mandated workshops to be held under the joint work; to establish the online portal for submissions under the workshops; and to determine how the work itself should be carried out and synthesised.

Under the SSJW, as with Koronivia before it, a series of workshops brings together a wide range of voices on a particular topic, with each workshop resulting in a synthesis report.
Such reports are “a form of recommendation”, said Marie Cosquer, co-coordinator of the Climate Action Network’s agriculture working group and advocacy analyst at Action against Hunger. She added:

“Even if it’s sometimes very top line, it’s still a political signal for countries to orient and define their food-systems policies.”

On the first day of the negotiations, some developed countries suggested that it would be more constructive to start with a clean sheet, having failed to come to a consensus at the last session of the subsidiary bodies in Bonn. But developing countries supported using the informal note prepared in Bonn in June as the basis of negotiations.

As a result, the negotiations began “very blocked”, Cosquer said. She told Carbon Brief:

“We were really disappointed to see that nothing has moved since Bonn.”

Parties reportedly “lamented” the lack of progress in the negotiating rooms over the course of the first several days, with some noting that the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture (See: Food systems transformation) gave added weight and urgency to the work being done there. Both parties and observers said they lamented that one year of the SSJW mandate had already passed, with nothing to show for it. 

There were two elements “gluing up” the negotiations, said Teresa Anderson, global climate justice lead at ActionAid. She told Carbon Brief:

“One is the process and the bureaucracy entailed in making outcomes. And one is the content – and, of course, we need the right bureaucracy, we need the right systems in place, in order to have the right conversations about the content.”

The G77 plus China negotiating bloc put forward a proposal for a “coordination group”, which would help facilitate implementation of the joint work. Developed countries expressed concerns over what that group would achieve and the costs it would incur to implement additional meetings.

Anderson noted that it was clear that changes needed to be made in the process in order to begin to effectively implement the joint work, but “developing countries hadn’t proven to developed countries that this [coordination group] is really the right structure to solve the problem”.

As the negotiations progressed, the coordination group remained the major sticking point.

Million Belay, the general coordinator of Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa and a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, told Carbon Brief:

“The G77 plus China are saying: ‘No. [We have] coordination or there is no negotiation.’”

As the negotiations neared a “critical moment”, US negotiators attempted to bridge the gap between the G77 plus China and the EU, Belay said. He added that the US taking this role was “surprising, because mostly they are a bridge breaker, not a bridge maker”.

Negotiators met several times in both informal and “informal-informal” consultations on 5 December without moving forward. At the final consultation that night, both global north and global south countries expressed their disappointment over the failure to come to an agreement.

Ultimately, the SSJW negotiations ended with a procedural text. This “essentially means, ‘we talked, we’ll talk again’”, Anderson told Carbon Brief. She continued:

“There’s a long, bloated, confusing text now, with everybody’s pet pieces and pet hates all in there. That’s now being recorded as an informal note, which means that it can be picked up to be discussed again next year.”

The draft decision on the Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on agriculture and food security. Source: UNFCCC

The informal note that will be forwarded to Bonn next year has no legal status and may or may not be used as the basis of the next round of negotiations.

Annex I of the informal note contains a still-bracketed decision to establish a coordination group to “facilitate the Sharm el-Sheikh joint work…for the duration of the mandate established” at COP27.

Annex II lays out the seven proposed topics for the three workshops, with two options for each of the first two workshops and three for the final one:

• Scaling up means of implementation, including finance, technology development and transfer and capacity-building.
• Risk management, including early-warning systems for food security.
• Approaches to sustainable agriculture and food security.
• Holistic approaches to agriculture and food security.
• Fisheries and aquaculture.
• Understanding sustainable food systems through climate action.
• Measuring, monitoring, reporting and verifying climate action for agriculture and food security.

Clement Metivier, acting head of international advocacy at WWF-UK, told Carbon Brief:

“Having a dedicated workstream on agriculture is great, to have some focused work on that specific topic. But now we need to build the connections between this workstream – that is obviously very different from all the others – and the rest of the climate process.

“The key word is implementation. And the big question is: how can the UNFCCC actually help with implementation at the national and even the local level? When we talk about agriculture and food security, this is very much about local issues and very concrete solutions. And, obviously, this [COP] process is very different from implementation on the ground.”

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Nature finance

Carbon markets and Article 6

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement covers carbon markets and other “cooperative approaches” that countries can use to meet their climate targets.

“Voluntary” carbon markets – those that sit outside the UN climate regime – have long been viewed by some as a lawless “wild west”. This year, in particular, voluntary carbon markets and forest carbon offsets have been under intense scrutiny, courtesy of several high-profile investigations examining whether they deliver on their stated carbon-saving goals and their impacts on biodiversity and local communities.

In the weeks leading up to COP28, for instance, a host of news outlets reported on a “new scramble for Africa”, in which a UAE sheikh with no previous nature conservation experience was striking carbon market deals across the continent. One of the deals reportedly covers one-fifth of Zimbabwe’s land mass.

Potential climate impacts on the ecosystems expected to remove this carbon have also brought to the fore fears that any carbon gains polluters are counting on could go up in smoke because of wildfire risks.

Some countries are opposed to the idea of carbon markets in principle, while offsetting is central to the climate policies of others. As a result, Article 6 negotiations are often contentious, reaching a head in Madrid at COP25, where countries failed to agree on rules that could “make or break” the entire Paris Agreement.

The following year, at COP26 in Glasgow, countries agreed on rules for bilateral carbon trading between countries under Article 6.2, on an international carbon market under Article 6.4 and on “non-market approaches” under Article 6.8.

With the rules written, the International Emissions Trading Agency (IETA) hoped that countries would put “politicised” bickering behind and operationalise the new market and 6.2 mechanism at COP28.

In Dubai, however, countries failed to reach an agreement on Article 6.2 and Article 6.4. Both of those were subject to “rule 16”, meaning talks will resume next year.

However, an agreement on Article 6.8 was reached and seen as a “victory” by some for ecosystem-based approaches that put local actors at their heart.

Many observers told Carbon Brief that “no deal was better than a bad deal” on Article 6.2 and 6.4.

NGO Carbon Market Watch commented that, if the draft decisions at COP28 had passed, Article 6 would have “torpedo[ed]” the Paris Agreement.

However, not passing the deal or developing robust safeguard tools was also worrying to many.

According to the IETA, 50 countries have already signed memoranda of understanding, implementation agreements or pilot projects related to Article 6. Over the last year, the first three deals to transfer emissions cuts under Article 6.2 have been authorised by Ghana, Thailand and Vanuatu to help Switzerland meet its climate targets.

Trishant Dev, climate change programme officer at the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, told Carbon Brief:

“Countries have already begun drawing up activities and seeking out bilateral deals under Article 6.2 and will end up drawing guidelines from the voluntary carbon market, locking in bad decisions until UN-backed rules are in place.”

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Article 6.2

Coming soon.

Article 6.4

Coming soon.

CDM Transition

Coming soon.

Article 6.8

Coming soon.

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Biodiversity and voluntary carbon markets

Coming soon.

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Debt-for-nature swaps

Coming soon.

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Biodiversity and the road to COP16

COP28 hosted an unprecedented number of high-level events on the links between climate change and nature loss.

This round of climate talks was the first to take place since countries agreed to a landmark new nature deal at the COP15 biodiversity summit, known as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), in December 2022.

Because of this, many of the new initiatives and pledges announced were focused on how countries can better integrate actions to meet the goals of both the GBF and the Paris Agreement.
In a first-of-its-kind initiative, COP28 president UAE and COP15 president China released a Joint Statement on Climate, Nature and People.

It was initially signed by Belize, Brazil, Cape Verde, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Egypt, France, Germany, Ghana, Indonesia, Norway, Palau, Rwanda, Samoa, Senegal, Seychelles, Spain, the UK and the US, according to a statement emailed to Carbon Brief.

The statement “recognised” that climate change poses a large threat to biodiversity and “noted” that the “continued loss and degradation of nature increases climate vulnerability”. (See Carbon Brief’s in-depth piece on the links between climate change and nature loss.)

The countries also pledged to ensure “comprehensiveness and coherence” between their next national climate pledges (“nationally determined contributions” or “NDCs”), due to be submitted before COP30 in 2025, and their next national nature plans (“national biodiversity strategies and action plans” or “NBSAPs”), due to be submitted before COP16 next year.

Rita El Zaghloul, a former biodiversity negotiator for Costa Rica who now directs the secretariat for the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People (HACN&P), a group of 118 nations that have pledged to protect 30% of Earth by 2030 (“30 by 30”), told Carbon Brief that this commitment could lead to more countries including nature in their NDCs. She said:

“Some countries are already doing that. In the case of Costa Rica, they already include nature goals in their NDCs. The goal is that more and more NDCs and NBSAPs talk to each other.”

The joint statement was launched at a ministerial event attended by more than 15 country ministers. This was one of several high-level events on the summit’s “nature day” on 9 December, El Zaghloul noted:

“This was the first time we were engaging on 30 by 30 within a UNFCCC COP. Last year, there were conversations happening, but we didn’t have any ministerial or high-level events. Here we saw a lot of interest from ministers and they took time to be at the events. I think this is testament to the importance of nature – even if we are at a UNFCCC COP.”

Elsewhere on nature day, China surprised delegates by announcing that it was joining the HACN&P. The announcement came from COP15 president and China environment minister Huang Runqiu via videolink at a high-level session on 30 by 30. 

El Zaghloul told Carbon Brief that the announcement came after more than two years of talks with China, who were initially reluctant to join the initiative while still maintaining the “neutral” role of COP15 president. She added:

“It’s extremely important. It’s one of the most megadiverse countries and the role of China in the adoption of the GBF was extremely important.”

Nature day also saw El Zaghloul launch a new “30 by 30 solutions toolkit” and a financial and technical “matchmaking” service, with the aim of giving all countries the help they need to protect 30% of their land and seas by 2030. El Zaghloul explained:

“Because it was HACN&P that started the 30 by 30 movement, it is also our responsibility to ensure that countries have the sufficient support and tools to meet the target. We know that it is an ambitious target, because we have to move from approximately 17% on land and 8% on oceans [that is currently protected] to 30% on both. Many of the megadiverse countries are developing countries and small island developing states, so we need to provide them with the tools.”

Near the end of the summit, Colombia surprised delegates by announcing it intends to host the next biodiversity summit, COP16, in 2024. (Previous host Turkey was forced to withdraw following the economic impact of earthquakes in the country.)

It came after Colombia sought to carve itself out as a high-ambition leader on both climate and biodiversity issues at the summit. For example, it became the first major oil producer to sign the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty and co-launched a global review of how sovereign debt is stymying climate and nature progress.

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Food systems transformations

The World Climate Action Summit on 1 December kicked off with the release of the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action, signed by 134 parties. (By 14 December, the declaration had garnered an additional 24 signatures and two further endorsements.)

At the release event, UAE climate and environment minister Mariam Almheiri noted that those signatories collectively represent more than three-quarters of the world’s total food systems emissions.

The headline of the declaration was a commitment to include agriculture and food systems into countries’ NDCs and other national plans “before the convening of COP30”. Many observers, NGOs and food-systems experts told Carbon Brief that the pledge to integrate food into national policy was a welcome one – as long as there was follow-through from governments.

But some rued the lack of attention paid in the declaration to the links between fossil fuels and agriculture, plus the pressing need to phase out fossil fuels. Marie Cosquer, co-coordinator of the Climate Action Network’s agriculture working group and advocacy analyst at Action against Hunger, told Carbon Brief:

“All the declarations, all this flurry of engagements, it’s diverting attention from the actual multilateral process and the fact that we need a strong GST [global stocktake] at the end of the next week, and a fossil-fuel phase-out.”

Million Belay, the general coordinator of Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa and a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, told Carbon Brief:

“There are some good elements there – it’s about transformation…But there’s heavy reliance on ‘technology will solve the problem’ kind of thinking…What kind of technology? Who owns the technology?”

At the same time, the lack of specific elements in the declaration was necessary for it to garner such wide support, said Ed Davey, partnerships director at the Food and Land Use Coalition. He told Carbon Brief:

“[These declarations] are not as important as the negotiated outcome and they never will be…[But] they are a way of signalling that something is important.”

Prof Tim Benton, research director at Chatham House, added that “to get 100-and-something countries to sign up, you can’t be too demanding of the hurdles that they have to go over”.

More than 200 non-state actors, such as research institutions, farmers’ groups and philanthropies, signed an accompanying Call to Action for Food-Systems Transformation, released on the same day. That document included a call for “transitioning away from fossil fuel use within food systems”.

Several financial pledges accompanied the food-systems announcements, including $890m to the research consortium CGIAR, $57m from the Bezos Earth Fund for food systems transformation and approximately $47m from Norway towards adaptation, largely for smallholder farmers.

COP28’s thematic food day, 10 December, saw the launch of the Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation, akin to the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance. Co-chairs Brazil, Norway and Sierra Leone were joined by Cambodia and Rwanda as the founding members of the alliance.

The five governments that make up the alliance have committed to “reorienting policies, practices and investment priorities to deliver better food systems outcomes for people, nature and climate”, according to a press release.

Benton described the Alliance of Champions as “raising the ceiling” on food systems transformation, whereas the Emirates Declaration “raise[d] the floor of ambition”. He told Carbon Brief:

“It’s not just the countries developing their own plans for food-systems transition, but it is also the ability of a group of countries to change the political space and change the political dynamics at negotiations such as this.”

Also on food day, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released a “global roadmap” for achieving food security without crossing the 1.5C threshold. The roadmap is the first in a series of three, with one set to be released at each of the two subsequent COPs.

The creation of such a roadmap – akin to the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero Roadmap – was a “good step forward”, said Patty Fong, programme manager at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. But, she added, the roadmap is “problematic for many reasons”, including promotion of bioenergy and a lack of attention to the links between fossil fuels and agriculture. She told Carbon Brief:

“[The roadmap is] basically promoting efficiency first, rather than wholesale transformation. And, if we’re trying to look at trying to get to the Paris Agreement, just a series of incremental steps that prioritises efficiency won’t get us to 1.5C.”

Fong said she hopes the FAO will “integrate an iterative