Farm Impasse at Climate Talks Threatens Goal to End Hunger – FAO Chief

A lack of progress on agricultural issues at the U.N. climate talks in Morocco puts at risk efforts to help farmers adapt to climate change and meet a global goal to end hunger by 2030, the head of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said on Wednesday.

Ahead of the negotiations, which are due to end on Friday, development agencies had hoped for the establishment of a work plan on agriculture that would pave the way for more concrete discussions on assistance for struggling small-scale farmers.

But governments have failed to agree on that, and plan to push a decision to next year. The impasse has happened even though the new global climate deal, crafted in Paris in 2015, recognises the importance of food security for the first time.

“We had been working since Paris… to push agriculture to be at the center of this meeting (in Marrakesh),” said José Graziano da Silva, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “It is very disappointing.”

Rich nations have long pressured developing countries to address ways to curb planet-warming emissions from their farms, while poorer states would rather focus on how farmers can adjust to rising temperatures and worsening droughts and floods.

Graziano da Silva said the talks in Marrakesh had mainly rehashed old arguments. A division between cutting emissions and adaptation to climate change “does not apply to agriculture”, he said in an interview on the sidelines of the negotiations.