Dispatch From UN Climate Change Conference: Monday, Nov. 18

Foof Tank at COP26

Danielle Nierenberg

We talk a lot about storytelling here at Food Tank, and for good reason: The stories we tell matter. They shape how we approach interacting with our neighbors, transforming systems, and building a better world. 

Danielle Nierenberg

The question of who tells our stories matters, too! 

Here at COP29 in Azerbaijan—and also in our day-to-day food system work at home—we need to make sure that stories about the food system are being told by people within the food system, people with deeply rooted community knowledge. 

“Journalists need to know what farmers are facing. You can’t tell the story if you don’t understand it,” Dizzanne Billy, the Caribbean Regional Director at Climate Tracker, told us yesterday during a roundtable at the Action on Food Hub Pavilion. “Exposure is very important for journalists, especially in the Caribbean.”

If people are unable to tell their own stories, they’ll disappear—metaphorically, yes, and also quite literally due to the climate crisis. 

“There is no place to run when you’re a small island nation. If we are not here at COP, we can’t advocate for what our countries need,” Carol Franco, Agricultural Negotiator for the Dominican Republic, said during our morning breakfast discussion series at the IICA Pavilion.

At COP29, lobbyists for industries like coal, oil, and gas outnumber the size of nearly every country’s national delegations, according to The Guardian. (The only exceptions, interestingly, are Azerbaijan, Brazil, and Turkey.) Lobbyists for carbon capture and storage, a practice that calls for trying to offset or “clean up” emissions rather than eliminating them, have particularly strong access to high-level negotiations, The Guardian also reports.

And to be clear: Shutting out industry from negotiations like this is not the solution. For better or worse, major corporations play a huge role in shaping our world—which means they can be extremely powerful when they do the right thing. 

But we know that “business as usual” is broken, and those leaders and their lobbyists cannot be the ones telling the stories that’ll define our future. The stories of the future need to be directed by Indigenous folks, by farmers, by youth advocates, by women, by community organizers and local experts.

How do we turn stories into actions at COP29?

Sunday was a Rest Day here in Baku, as the first week of COP29 comes to a close and we enter the second half of the conference. And to be blunt, progress so far has not been nearly as aggressive nor visionary as we—and the planet—need.

“What I saw was a lot of talk and very little action. We must face these challenges with a true sense of urgency and sincerity. We are dragging our feet as a planet,” Panama environment minister Juan Carlos Navarro told ABC News.

Of course, we know what’s needed here: Investment. Real, significant, meaningful financial investment directed to the people and places who need it most. We need to translate these stories into action, which, as panelists discussed yesterday at the Food and Ag Pavilion, takes cross-sector partnerships.

I really like the phrasing that Jack Bobo, from the University of Nottingham Food Systems Institute, used Saturday during our discussion at the IICA Pavilion: Radical collaboration.

“The problems we face are big and solutions cannot be achieved without radical collaboration,” he said. “We need to stop collaborating to take others down. We need to start collaborating to lift each other up.”

I’ll take up that call for the second week of COP29: Let’s collaborate to lift each other up! 

Yesterday was a rest day here in Baku, but today, the United Nations Climate Change Conference gets back underway in full force.  

And, as UN Environment Programme Executive Director Inger Andersen said, “it is climate crunch time.” The negotiations and decisions on the table this week are life-or-death questions for the future of the planet.

Many of us here at COP29 are reflecting on what comes next—both during the second week of the conference and also more big-picture. How do we ramp up climate action in our own communities? What will our countries’ climate action plans post-COP, or Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), commit to? What will the future of the planet actually look like?

To me, one answer to the question of “who and what is next” is obvious: Young people! They’re the ones who will inherit the planet. They will inherit the fallout of rising emissions, worsening natural disasters, resource shortages, and the cascading crises that climate change causes.

“If world leaders say we are the leaders of today—not just tomorrow—then why aren’t we at the table now, shaping the ambitions for our future?” says Bodh Maathura, a 24-year-old UNICEF Sri Lanka Youth Advocate. “Young people must be recognized as partners in creating, implementing, and monitoring the NDCs.”

Young people aren’t fooled by empty promises and talk with no action. Youth activists at COP have been clear-eyed in pointing out that a failure to meaningfully address the climate crisis doesn’t mean solutions don’t exist—but simply that high-level leaders are unwilling to prioritize them. They can see through the BS and are demanding better—something all of us should be inspired to do, too. 

“There is a lot of money. There is enough money all around, but we also know it is going to militarism, wars and genocides. There is simply no political will,” says youth advocate Alab Mirasol Ayroso. “This is why we refuse to be sidelined and silenced. We want the world to listen, hear us and our demands.”

Credit where it’s due goes to countries like Pakistan, which committed at COP29 to fully enshrining the rights and interests of young people in their upcoming NDC plans. 

“We must ensure our children and young people are prepared for the future they are growing into,” Honourable Murad Ali Shah, Chief Minister of Sindh Province in Pakistan, told UNICEF.

Between COP29 here in Baku and the G20 Summit, a meeting of major heads of state that’s taking place in Brazil today and tomorrow, there’s plenty of opportunity to make real change. At the G20, for example, I hope countries will ratify the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, a large-scale treaty to accelerate public policy and technological solutions around the world.

The next few days are so important, and we must keep our eyes open. Let’s follow the lead of our youth advocates in demanding that world leaders prioritize the climate, prioritize the food system, and prioritize a nourished and just future for all people and the planet!

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