Food systems are major contributors to climate change; however, they also have potential to advance both climate change mitigation and adaptation. To this end, 12 November was officially designated Adaptation & Agriculture Day at COP27, and featured prominent conversations on the interlinkages between food and climate change. In fact, the attention paid to food was unprecedented when compared to previous COP events, and included the launch of two COP27 Presidency initiatives dedicated to food and nutrition. This was not only welcome, but crucial! As Peter Defranceschi, Coordinator of ICLEI’s Global CityFood Program explained, “Can we afford to miss out on 30% or more of greenhouse gas emissions? Because that is what we miss if we don’t work on food systems.”
Cities and regions are at the heart of sustainable and just food systems. More than 70% of the world’s food is consumed in cities, and local governments often have regulatory mandates to directly shape these systems. It therefore follows that rich conversations took place at the Multilevel Action Pavilion about how to harness food systems change to advance climate mitigation and adaptation.
Of particular note, the “Feeding the city for healthy people, landscapes, and climate” session brought together experts in sustainable food systems, nutrition, food safety, food labour, and local leaders to discuss urban leadership in food transformation. This session, co-organised by ICLEI Europe, Africa, and South America built in many ways off of the ICLEI-supported Glasgow Food and Climate Declaration, launched a year earlier at COP26.
Food is about climate, sustainability, inequality, economics, labour, nutrition, and culture, and must be approached with all these dimensions in mind. As described by Chantal Clement, Deputy Director of IPES-Food, “It is not just about tackling emissions. It’s about ensuring environmental, social, economic measures that create just and climate-resilient food systems at the local level.”
Such a holistic approach is necessary, but also very complex. Fortunately, cities have huge power to enact change here. Lawrence Haddad, Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) explained, “Cities can do a lot. Cities are public procurers of food. And the messages that cities send are very powerful. If a city just goes for the cheapest cost-per-calorie option, and doesn't care about how it’s grown or what’s in it in terms of nutrition, that sends a powerful signal to the rest of the country and to the private sector.”
Indeed, ICLEI has long supported cities to leverage their public procurement power to enact food systems change. ICLEI Europe is currently gathering signatures on a petition calling on EU and national policy makers to guarantee sustainable school meals as part of the EU Farm to Fork strategy; and has a manifesto out that calls for a minimum standard for public canteens across the EU as part of Farm to Fork implementation.
This work was welcomed at COP27, not only by cities, but rather by a wide variety of food actors. Eugenia Carrara, Secretary General of the World Union of Wholesale Markets expressed: “We’re speaking about issues that are really interdependent. I’m so happy that ICLEI is fostering this systemic approach. It is not just about food security, it is not just about nutrition, it is not just about city development and economic development of societies. It is interdependent.”
More information on discussions around food at COP, including from the negotiating table, can be found in an article written for ICLEI’s international CityTalk blog. Cities looking to do their part to change food systems so that they are sustainable, healthy, and resilient can explore ICLEI’s newly relaunched Global CityFood Program at: https://cityfood-program.org/. All readers can also call on their national leaders to endorse the Urban Food Systems Coalition, whose Secretariat is coordinated by FAO, GAIN and ICLEI, by signing the Coalition’s declaration of engagement.