Dispatch From UN Climate Change Confce: Thursday, Nov. 14

Danielle Nierenberg

Danielle Nierenberg

Greetings from Baku, Azerbaijan!

I am here for the United Nations’ annual climate change conference, COP29. Tens of thousands of world leaders, agriculture ministers, scientists, advocates, chefs, farmers, journalists and more are gathering here—not just to talk the climate crisis, but also to commit to implementing and strengthening solutions.

For the next several days, as discussions and negotiations ramp up especially around food and agriculture, I’ll be sending you these daily dispatches with thoughts from my notebook, reflections on and reactions to the progress being made, and ways to take action. Please feel free to forward this to colleagues and other folks in your network, so they too can keep up with COP!

If you’re here in Baku, I’ll also be sharing my daily calendar of events from Food Tank and our partners that are worth your time. HERE is a link to a roundup of all of Food Tank's programming, including daily breakfasts with world agriculture ministers, dialogues for climate action, lunches with climate journalists and farmers/producers, happy hours with climate negotiators, and multi-stakeholder dinners at extraordinary locations across the city.

Alright, let’s dive in.

What progress are we expecting at COP this year?

Broadly, there are two major priorities for COP29 negotiations: Countries need to agree on a new post-2025 climate finance goal, and each country also needs to renew its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which represent a country’s action plan to limit warming and must be resubmitted every five years.  Themes we’re expecting to hear at COP involve climate financing and investment and the responsibility of larger countries to take more accountability for their emissions.

Over the past few years, I’ve been thrilled to see—and help spotlight—a greater awareness of the centrality of food and agriculture as climate solutions among civil society participants at COP. But it’s crucial that food and agriculture topics be taken more seriously in the high-level policy negotiations that are taking place, too. 

Where did we leave off on food systems after COP28 last year?

COP28’s legacy is a little mixed. A Global Stocktake helped us understand where we stood, but some of the goals that were adopted at COP28 have not proven strong enough to make change as quickly as we need it. The marquee negotiations on food and agriculture at COP28, called the Sharm el-Sheikh Joint Work, broke down during the conference itself but were revived in June. The result, to keep things simple, was an agreement to produce several reports and hold two workshops over the next couple years.

What has happened at COP29 so far?

The various food-focused pavilions at COP29 have already been the site of many important conversations about the future of agriculture and resilience amid a changing climate! 

“Adaptation is inherently a local process,” said Todd A. Crane, Principal Scientist at International Livestock Research Institute, at an event at the Food and Ag Pavilion yesterday. Efforts to address climate change need to be locally designed, implemented, and managed, participants explained, which means genuinely engaging with traditional knowledge systems and ensuring communities have the financial and technological resources they need. This not only bolsters those solutions themselves but circles back to support the communities, too.

“Adaptation efforts can strengthen communities’ resilience not only to climate stresses but also to other shocks—whether they be economic in nature or social in nature—and address the drivers of conflict,” said Frans Schapendonk, from the Alliance of Biodiversity and CIAT. 

At the Action on Food Hub Pavilion yesterday, during a pair of events focused on youth-led initiatives, panelists highlighted young innovators who are championing regenerative soil practices, driving technology, and organizing their peers into scalable movements and campaigns. 

Meanwhile, discussions over at the IICA Pavilion with folks like Dr. Michael Kremer, a Nobel Laureate in Economics, reiterated the importance of centering those on the ground, literally.

“Concrete actions should prioritize farmers’ voices,” said World Farmers Organization Secretary General Andrea Porro at the IICA Pavilion yesterday. “Governments, companies, philanthropies, and organizations proposing solutions for farmers should start by listening to farmers!”

I couldn't agree more!

We’ve also seen a couple big-ticket updates on some of the main policymaking priorities for COP29:

Brazil announced its updated Nationally Determined Contribution, which carries an additional layer of meaning since the country will host the important COP30 conference next year. Their NDC plan calls for a reduction in emissions by 2035 that represents somewhere between 59 to 67 percent less than the country’s 2005 emissions, Brazilian media reports. The plan is not perfect—the low end of the range is not ambitious enough, in my opinion, but there’s promising language about eliminating deforestation and restoring native vegetation.

On Monday, countries agreed to a set of standards that would be part of the framework for a UN-backed global carbon market, by which countries would purchase credits for allowable emissions and the U.N. would use the funds generated to support emission-reduction projects. Some disagreement remains, however, about whether the standards are robust enough to work and whether negotiators prioritized human rights.

On Tuesday, a group of top global development banks agreed to dramatically increase financing to low- and middle-income countries, ramping up to US$120 billion per year by 2030. That would be a more than 60 percent increase over what the banks pledged last year and would help smaller and/or poorer nations better adapt to the impacts of extreme weather and build resiliency.

“We have a clear choice between a safer, cleaner, fairer future and a dirtier, more dangerous, and more expensive one. We know what to do. Let's get to work. Let's get it done,” said John Podesta, the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.

Needless to say, the stakes are high. 

This year has been “a masterclass in human destruction,” UN Secretary General António Guterres told world leaders this week at COP29. It’s a sobering quote that reminds us that, if we don’t take action, the climate crisis will continue to make natural disasters like hurricanes more devastating, more people to become climate refugees, more kids and adults to go hungry, more lives and livelihoods to be jeopardized.

Just before COP29 started this month, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) released the State of Food and Agriculture 2024 report. Their findings confirmed that the hidden “true costs” of the global food system represent an economic hit of about US$12 trillion every single year across 156 countries.

Like I said, there’ll be a lot of talk about finance and climate funding at COP29 this year here in Baku, and true-cost accounting must be central to that conversation for decision-makers to make informed choices.

As FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu said, “The choices we make now—the priorities we set and the solutions we implement—will determine our shared future. Real change begins with individual actions and initiatives, supported by enabling policies and targeted investments. The transformation of global agrifood systems is fundamental to achieving the SDGs and securing a prosperous future for all.”

I hope to hear from you throughout the day, whether in person here at COP29 or via email at danielle@foodtank.com. Let me know what your personal priorities and topics of interest are, and let’s build a better food system together!

(Danielle Nierenberg is the President of Food Tank and can be reached at danielle@foodtank.com)