The COP28 Food Systems and Agriculture Agenda calls for accelerated food systems, agriculture and climate action and urges governments to align and integrate those actions within national strategies, including Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) amongst others. It is built upon four pillars, covering national leadership, non-state actors, scaling up innovation, and finance as critical enablers to climate-resilient food system transformation. The United Arab Emirates Presidency convened a group of key partners supporting NDC and NAP planning and implementation across a wide range of countries and food and agriculture systems to consolidate existing experiences, learnings and resources for a global audience to accelerate ambitious climate action in food and agriculture systems at large. This task force, including WWF, Global Alliance for the Future of Food, Climate Focus, NDC Partnership, FAO, Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, synthesised all guidance material available and lessons learned on NDC and NAP implementation for food system transformation.
The “COP28 Agriculture, Food and Climate Action Toolkit” developed serves as a key resource for national policymakers and decision-makers aiming to accelerate and align national efforts on climate action and food and agriculture system transformation by (1) providing a summary of priority actions, (2) giving an overview of good examples of NDCs and NAPs in how they integrate agriculture and food system measures, and (3) providing overview of existing initiatives, platforms, and tools that can help governments in developing and implementing agriculture and food system policy measures as part of their NDCs and NAPs.
By equipping state actors and other key stakeholders with a useful set of knowledge assets, the toolkit specifically aims to support countries to:
1) strengthen integration and alignment of national climate action and food system-transformation strategies, including between NDCs, NAPs, and national food system
transformation pathways;
2) enhance the integration of food and agriculture system transformation in NDC
implementation and revision processes in 2025 and 2030; and
3) improve the integration of food and agriculture system transformation in NAP
formulation and implementation processes, including considerations of NAP progress in 2024.
The toolkit represents a direct contribution to Pillar 1 of the COP28 Food Systems and Agriculture Agenda, which aims to catalyze state-level action and mobilize the global community to support and sustain national efforts to align climate action and food systems transformation beyond COP28. It will also support implementation of the Sharm el-Sheikh Joint Work on Implementation of Climate Action on Agriculture and Food Security adopted at COP27 (Decision 3/CP.27) and the Emirates Declaration on Resilient Food Systems, Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Action, which was endorsed by 134 countries at COP28.