Agriculture negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

B Marambe

doi:10.4038/sljfa.v5i2.71

Abstract

Agriculture and food in the United Nations Framework Convention on Agriculture (1992) and related legal instruments, including the Paris Agreement (2015). With initial discussions during climate negotiations from 2004 to 2011, issues related to agriculture were discussed from 2012 to 2017 in the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), which is one of the two permanent subsidiary bodies of the UNFCCC. The first substantive outcome and the decision of the Conference of Parties (COP) was made at the 23rd COP (Decision 4/CP.23) held in Bonn, Germany in November 2017. The decision SBSTA and Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) to jointly address issues related to agriculture. Further, it officially acknowledged the significance of the agriculture sector in adapting to and mitigating climate change through the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA). The KJWA road map has been developed with the final reporting to be taken place in COP 26 in Glasgow, United Kingdom in 2020. This paper provides the major events that have taken place during the agriculture negotiations to-date under the UNFCCC.

Highlights

The Rio Earth Summit of the United Nations held in Brazil in 1992 gave birth to three important global conventions, namely, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)
These three conventions jointly plays a pivotal role in a scenario that land productivity is declining at an alarming rate, >33% of the land is degraded, current management practices in the land use sector is responsible for approx. 25% of the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and that biodiversity is disappearing at alarming rates (UN, 2017)
This paper provides an overview of the events and progress of international climate change negotiations, only focussing on agriculture under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

Summary

Introduction

The Rio Earth Summit of the United Nations held in Brazil in 1992 gave birth to three important global conventions, namely, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) These three conventions jointly plays a pivotal role in a scenario that land productivity is declining at an alarming rate, >33% of the land is degraded, current management practices in the land use sector is responsible for approx. This paper provides an overview of the events and progress of international climate change negotiations, only focussing on agriculture under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Under the UNFCCC, the industrialized countries and countries undergoing the process of transition to a market economy (Annex I Parties; UN, 1992) have agreed to regularly report on their climate change policies and measures and submit an annual inventory of their GHG emissions to the to the Conference of Parties (COP), which is the supreme decision-making body of the Convention. Twenty five COPs and 51 SBSTAs/SBIs have taken place to-date where the global community has negotiated extensively on the climate related policy matters

Agriculture under UNFCCC

Agriculture Workshops at SBSTA sessions

Paris Agreement

The Future

Convention on Climate