Why the COP28 climate negotiations must shake up the way the world produces food​

The Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems, and Climate Action - signed by more than 134 Governments - asserts food systems and agriculture need to be at the centre of actions at COP28 for the first time, and it's a positive step.

While it is agreed the path to 1.5 degrees is through a wholesale transformation in how the world produces and consumes food, current initiatives are primarily influenced by the hundreds of multinational agribusinesses roaming and lobbying in the corridors of COP28.

The steering committee of the COP28 Regenerative Landscapes flagship initiative is composed mostly of top executives from international agribusiness who push for regenerative approaches to offset their emissions via soil carbon markets or for sustainable intensification technologies. Millions of dollars have been pledged to finance corporate technologies that will further entrench the dominance of polluting corporations - including their cruel factory farming in the global food system.

Yet the differences between the desires for ever-expanding profits of global food and finance corporations and the rights, needs and demands of small-scale food producers in those countries most affected by food insecurity and climate change are stark.

Small-scale, independent farmers produce 80 per cent of food in Africa. Many of them practise and demand public support for agroecology as a pathway to justice as they care for our planet and put food on the world’s table.

That’s why a reassessment of the financing model and a commitment to channelling resources towards supporting smallholders is needed in Dubai. Subsidies must be redirected away from big agribusiness and towards small-scale producers.

When discussing the climate crisis, we focus on carbon emissions and the environmental degradation around us. Yet, we seldom mention the animal cruelty within our flawed food system.

As each day goes by, 900,000 cows, 1.4 million goats, 3.8 million pigs, and 202 million chickens are killed for food. It’s thought that around 92 billion land animals and countless underwater animals are farmed and killed each year.

The factory farming system not only causes suffering to billions of animals and the destruction of wild habitats. It undermines the food security for communities around the world. Land that could be used efficiently to grow crops for humans or protect wildlife is instead used to plant crops to feed factory-farmed animals, which become

our food. Land is also cleared to house the animals themselves. It’s simply a wasteful and backwards food chain.

Animal agriculture is responsible for a significant amount of climate-changing emissions. It’s thought that the industry contributes to at least 14.5 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions and drives deforestation, biodiversity loss, and water pollution.

We all witness the disastrous effects on our weather - though the most vulnerable regions in the Global South, like Africa, bear the brunt. These nations’ governments are left to foot the bill and clean up the damage whilst big meat companies continue to make staggering profits.

According to the IPCC, even if all fossil fuel emissions were immediately eliminated, food systems emissions alone would jeopardise the 1.5-degree Celsius target set by the Paris Agreement.

Yet it’s quite astonishing how forecasts indicate that the growth of factory farming is set to surge, driven by an expected 30 per cent rise in meat demand in Africa (from a low base), 18 per cent in the Asia Pacific, 12 per cent in Latin America and 9 per cent in North America by 2030. This will lead to more factory farming pollution, undermining global food security.

It’s clear animal cruelty and the climate crisis are interlinked. That’s why World Animal Protection is here at COP28 calling for a 10-year moratorium on new factory farm approvals to put the brakes on the system’s rapid global expansion. We must also shore up a humane and sustainable food supply by replacing meat and dairy with plant-based foods in ways that support small-scale farmers. Animals remaining on factory farms should be spared the worst forms of suffering.

These actions would help address the climate crisis, global food security, biodiversity protection, and livelihoods. And they would benefit animal welfare.

The disturbing reality is that our animal-based food system poses a core obstacle in achieving the targets in the Paris Climate Agreement and casts a dark shadow over the prospect of a climate-safe future.

World leaders must step up at COP28 and honour their commitments by acknowledging the extensive harm our food system inflicts on animals and humanity, and our precious planet. A shift towards a plant-based food system is essential.

This is the COP where we must move away from the current, flawed industrial agriculture model towards agroecology and justice for humans and animals.