UN reports say climate change increasingly threatening agrifood sector

ATHENS

The UN highlighted Friday that climate change is increasingly threatening the agrifood sector.

“Agrifood systems are facing an escalating threat from climate change-induced loss and damage, and actions – including increasing financing— must be taken to address their vulnerabilities,” the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said in a report released on the sidelines of the UN Climate Conference COP28 in Dubai.

It said 35% of current climate action plans explicitly refer to loss and damage, underscoring the growing relevance of the issue on the global stage, with agriculture pointed out as the single most affected domain.

The study underscored the vital need for targeted efforts to address vulnerabilities in agrifood systems, which play an important role in livelihoods and sustainable development.

“In 2020, the agrifood sector employed over 866 million people globally and represented a turnover of $3.6 trillion,” it said.

The report also drew attention to the urgent need to improve methodologies and tools for assessing the negative effects of climate change as contemporary methods often fail to capture slow-onset events and non-economic dimensions of loss and damage.

It urged actions to mitigate the effects of loss and damage in agrifood systems, including clarifying the meaning of loss and damage for national agrifood systems, enhancing climate risk assessment, investing in data collection and research, implementing adaptation measures and strengthening emergency responses.