Seven Years after the Paris Climate Agreement: How Action-focused are NDCs to Transform Food and Land Use Systems?
Conclusions from the 2022 update of the SDSN-led FELD Action Tracker, assessing Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) on behalf of the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU)
When COP26 ended in Glasgow one year ago, it was clear to everyone: in spite of progress, what countries had committed to in terms of climate action for the ongoing decade to 2030 fell far short of what was needed. The Glasgow Climate Pact therefore called for all parties to revisit their NDCs and 2030 targets, to make sure they aligned with the Paris target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Some countries have indeed done so, as recently as last week, but much fewer than expected and needed; in fact, most of the high-emitting countries whose action matters most to significantly reduce emissions and turn around trends, have not.
- Only a third of NDCs back their commitments with concrete policy measures related to food and land use;
- Fewer than half of the NDCs provide some form of targets for these sectors, and only four of them include specific targets for emission reductions;
- Only one in five NDCs includes financial information regarding the tentative costs, budget requirements, and sources of funding of proposed policy actions of food and land use; and
- Fewer than half of the NDCs specify countries’ needs for technology development, transfer, and capacity building to achieve meaningful food and land use transformation.
Why tracking action on food and land use?
In the run up to COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, the SDSN-based FELD team updated its analysis of NDCs undertaken for the FOLU Coalition a year earlier, to provide policymakers at global level and in countries with a fresh snapshot and critical assessment of NDC commitments as they relate to food and land use. After all, taken together human activities related to agriculture and other aspects of food production, forestry, oceans and other land use generate up to one third of all human-made greenhouse gas emissions. Government action on climate change - while picking up significantly in energy, transport and a few other (sub) sectors - has so far not adequately addressed food and land-related emissions, as confirmed in FELD’s 2021 analysis.
One year later, the discussions have moved on and food systems at the just-concluded COP27 were confirmed at the center of the climate agenda, emphasizing both the urgency for mitigation and adaptation action across all sectors. But do we see this shift also reflected in NDCs?
FELD’s updated analysis, summarized in the 2022 Update brief issued by the FOLU Coalition during COP27, expanded to now 24 NDCs (up from previously 15) including all G20 countries and additional developing countries from across Asia, Africa and South America. Together, these NDCs represent 80% of global GHG emissions. The analysis applied a sharp focus on what concretely NDCs provide in terms of explicit priorities, commitments and targets related to food and land use, and the extent they focus on action and implementation follow up in countries and across sectors.
In a nutshell: How do NDCs address the needed action in food and land use?
Overall, the findings of our analysis are sobering: seven years after the Paris Agreement, countries still do not sufficiently and consistently include emissions from, and actions for, their food and land sectors. Many of the world’s largest emitters have yet to align their policy action with their actual emission profiles and consider especially the need for shifts toward sustainable diets and consumption, and to address food loss and waste.
The updated analysis reveals an important pattern: Broad conventional areas related to agriculture and the environment, including oceans tend to be well covered. These include the adoption of climate smart agriculture with improved seeds and irrigation techniques, or the restoration of degraded land and aquatic ecosystems, as part of their mitigation and adaptation strategies. Examples include:
- Ethiopia’s ambitious mitigation targets for both the agriculture and land use, land-use change and forestry sectors, broken down into specific actions across different subsectors;
- The UK’s wide-ranging list of policies related to food and land systems, including practical emission reductions in food storage and distribution;
- Indonesia’s recently enhanced commitments related to forest management to reduce deforestation.
At the same time, NDCs include significantly less coverage, priorities and concrete actions related to key demand-side aspects of the mitigation challenge in food and land use, including the need for dietary and consumption shifts in most developed economies that are associated with substantial emissions from agricultural commodities and land use change (especially deforestation), eg in the Amazon region. These spill-over effects from policies and actions in one country (or in the case of the EU, bloc of countries) on conditions and emissions in others, especially developing countries, are often overlooked or deliberately left aside. Similarly, only few G20 countries like China and Canada, acknowledge and propose measures to address food loss and waste within their borders – itself responsible in some countries for 10 percent or more of national emissions – leaving aside the high social, economic and environmental ‘costs’.
Without focused attention to the direct and indirect effects of consumption levels and other demand-side factors, and the consideration of actual emission profiles as a basis for the setting of national and sectoral targets, food and land use related emissions will continue to increase. And without a substantial contribution of these sectors, net zero strategies and the Paris goal of averting or limiting catastrophic effects of climate change will remain out of reach.
How much are current NDCs focused on action? Are they conducive to implementation and policy follow up ‘on the ground’?
While most NDCs analysed in this year’s review broadly cover all relevant sectors related to food and land use, not all of them do indeed specify concrete measures – and even fewer are setting concrete (sectoral) targets. Other critical factors for the implementation and operationalisation of NDC commitments are also frequently kept vague or absent: references to the existing policy and governance contexts, to financing commitments and requirements for the necessary transitions and implementation, as well as to the necessary planning, coordination and other mechanisms needed to ensure effective operational follow up and continuous monitoring.
Examples of NDCs that do provide specific commitments and information of direct relevance for national policy follow up include:
- Kenya’s NDC provides commitments in the context of existing and planned national policies alongside prioritized adaptation programmes, including for the restoration and conservation of degraded areas, the promotion of nature-based solutions for enterprises, as well as the development of commercial activities in forest areas.
- Ghana’s NDC provides a detailed funding needs for each of its 19 priority policy actions, including the funding for resilient agriculture and sustainable forest management.
- Indonesia’s new NDC identifies the “integration of climate change into spatial planning” as a key principle; and
- Canada’s NDC mentions specific programme funds to develop new technologies in the agricultural sector.
One of the most immediate concerns from this updated analysis is the lack of concrete ambitious sectoral targets, both relative or nominal, in the NDCs of particular the world’s main emitting countries. In many of them, agriculture and land use change represent a significant share of national (incl historical) emissions – both in absolute terms and relative to overall emissions. Only few NDCs from the current set of G20 and additional FOLU countries do quantify their planned reduction of emissions from these sectors as part of the overall national mitigation commitment and target. Examples are Colombia and Japan, but other countries’ NDC lack specific targets eg for agriculture-related emissions or the reduction of food loss and waste.
On the positive side: as confirmed also by other parallel studies, more countries than before now have dedicated sections focusing on adaptation and the particular urgency to invest in resilient agriculture and food systems. NDCs of developing countries – many of them justifiably not focusing on substantial mitigation action have seized on the opportunity of presenting adaptation plans including tentative investment and financing needs.
How to both strengthen and move beyond NDCs with a focus on national implementation to transform food and land use?
While CP27 didn’t conclude on a strong call to all countries to ratchet up mitigation ambition across all sectors – some countries are known to be working on more ambitious NDCs. This includes the EU as well as a number of other G20 countries expected to both revise headline and sectoral targets, possibly extending also to food and land use on the basis of developments during the past 12-15 months (UN Food Systems Summit, IPCC reports, COP26 and COP27 sectoral initiatives related to forests, food and land use).
Critical elements of these updates should be those that directly facilitate (sub)national implementation follow up, as well as global level commitments of adaptation finance for developing countries to put in place practical measures for more resilient agriculture and food systems. This is particularly important in the current geopolitical context of expanding food prices and insecurity felt especially by countries in the global South. Aspects of international trade, supply chains and spill-over effects of developed-country demand and imports of food commodities are responsible for and a major driver of deforestation and GHG emissions in other countries, and thus need to shift more into the focus of national climate plans as reflected in NDCs.
Key take-aways for advancing food and land use transformation
- NDCs cannot replace existing national processes and planning instruments but can play an important role in raising and signaling political ambition and commitment. Delivery of these commitments depends on national policy processes and institutional responsibilities for linking targets to policies, interventions, budget lines and technologies.
- Going forward, countries need to identify and commit to the implementation costs of NDCs and the systemic transitions that decarbonization requires. For developing countries and donors alike, NDCs are already beginning to serve as platforms for mobilising external financing for both climate mitigation and adaptation.
- Countries need to fully align near-term action and commitments for the current decade (as part of their NDCs toward 2030 targets) with longer-term strategies and pathways for reaching net zero by mid-century. Many countries still have to formulate or align their long-term strategies.
- For both short and long term commitments and action plans, countries need to ensure the involvement of all relevant stakeholders, including from within the existing food and land use systems, from consultations to policy dialogue, implementation planning and the continuous monitoring of implementation, policy coherence and impact.
What next?
For this decade, designated as a UN Decade of Action on the global goals, current NDCs from G20 and key developing countries provide a shaky basis at best. It is important that the lessons from this experience inform the design of future NDCs (due to the UN by 2025) to enhance, ratchet up and make up lost time, including by accelerating the transformation of food and land use globally. The ultimate achievement of the Paris Agenda for carbon neutrality by mid-century and the effective limitation of global warming to prevent the most catastrophic impacts of climate change will depend on countries to develop integrated national pathways that reflect their specific emission profiles and sequestration potentials. The role of AFOLU sectors in net zero pathways, and the respective policy choices countries are facing, are subject to related work under the FABLE Consortium (and a parallel FOLU publication, FABLE 2022).
While this analysis was limited to a detailed desk review of the original NDC documents and didn’t include any cross-checking with in-country experts on actual implementation, or even the general awareness of NDC content, the analysis is indicative of relative assignment of priorities in key countries. Aside from informing global level discussions at COP and other inter-governmental processes, the analysis also provides a foundation for discussions within countries to “localize” and integrate NDC commitments with mainstream national planning, budget and implementation frameworks.
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Acknowledgments
SDSN and the FOLU Coalition are grateful to the following funders and collaborators supporting the work of the FELD Action Tracker: the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), and Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI); in addition, FELD received funding from the Ford Foundation (through the Climate and Land Use Alliance, CLUA), and the Robert Bosch Stiftung.
