As countries prepare for the COP31 climate negotiations in Antalya, CGIAR, the world's largest publicly funded agricultural research network, has set out what it wants the talks to do for the people who grow food, herd livestock and fish.
Its first ask concerns agriculture's own place in the talks. The Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on agriculture, launched at COP27, reaches the end of its mandate at COP31. CGIAR wants a dedicated space for agriculture to continue, with more weight on implementation; if countries are not ready to agree a successor programme, it backs extending the current mandate while a new framework is worked out.
On adaptation, talks on the Global Goal on Adaptation stalled at the June meetings in Bonn. With no agreed text, the item moved automatically to COP31 under the UNFCCC's "rule 16". The sticking point is the method behind the new adaptation indicators. CGIAR says the indicators must cover food, water, livestock, fisheries and drylands, and that measuring adaptation must come with money to pay for it.
The mitigation work programme also ended in Bonn without conclusions. CGIAR points to farm practices that cut emissions while raising incomes and resilience, from low-emission rice to better livestock feeding, and to the data gaps that stop many countries measuring those gains.
Agriculture, it says, remains badly underfinanced. It is calling for finance that is easier to reach and more predictable, with more grants and concessional money, so that it reaches producers without adding to their debt. On the just transition work programme, whose review terms were agreed in Bonn, it wants smallholders, pastoralists, fishers, women and young people at the centre, and it is helping countries put the Belém Gender Action Plan into practice.
CGIAR describes four ways its centres feed the process: briefings for negotiators on crops, livestock, water, aquatic foods, finance and gender; formal written submissions to UNFCCC calls for views; dialogues that bring negotiators and researchers together, such as the agriculture dialogue the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT co-hosted with FAO and WWF in Bonn in June; and support for negotiators, including through its Gender Accelerator.
Beyond Antalya, CGIAR wants agrifood systems and water kept central to the second Global Stocktake, which concludes in 2028, after the first recognised food systems and agriculture as central to closing the gaps in climate action.
The article was written by Daniela Miranda and Katherine Leitzell.
Source: CGIAR
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