At COP30 in Brazil, Lula can lead the world in transforming food

Anna Lappé is the Executive Director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, and Elisabetta Recine is a food policy expert at the University of Brasília.

In a historic move, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva opened the G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro last year with the launch of an alliance to combat hunger and poverty.

The creation of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, President Lula said, was to signal that it is beyond time to tackle “the scourge that shames humanity” - that nearly 800 million people are undernourished in a world that produces more than enough food. 

Today, 93 countries and the African Union and European Union have signed on to the alliance, joined by dozens of civil society organisations and networks. But since that bold anti-hunger statement last year, a lot has changed.

In just the past three months, we’ve seen serious cuts in public funding for food, health and development around the world. The United States alone has slashed billions in national and international funding.

Governments like Britain, France, and the Netherlands have also announced cuts in overseas development assistance. Confidence in multilateralism is low amidst conflicts, trade wars, rising authoritarianism, and a vacuum in compassionate leadership. 

In this context, we head into international climate talks this year, following three decades of such negotiations failing to sufficiently address the intersections between the climate crisis, hunger and poverty - and the role of industrial food systems in exacerbating these crises. 

As host of COP30, Brazil has an opportunity to demonstrate moral leadership by confronting the shared drivers of these crises. Doing so, puts food systems squarely on the agenda and within in the existing priorities set out by Brazil for COP30.

For example, the Global Stocktake at COP28 urged governments to move towards “sustainable and regenerative food systems”.

Translating words into action, as the Brazilian Presidency has promised to do, requires recognising that industrial food systems use nearly 15% of fossil fuels annually. From farm to fork to landfill, food systems emit over one third of greenhouse gas emissions. Updated national climate plans must include a just transition away from fossil fuels which involves producers and workers across the food chain.    

There is also an urgency for adaptation in agriculture by reorienting production towards resilient systems, such as agroecological and regenerative approaches. Smallholders are on the frontlines: a study by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) showed that 439 million smallholder producers invest around $368 billion of their own money every year in climate adaptation.

Meanwhile, climate finance is falling short for food systems. While overall public climate finance increased between 2017 and 2022, the portion going towards food systems fell from 3% to 2.5%, and only 1.5% for sustainable food systems.

The ‘Amazon COP’ has the potential to make links between forests, land, biodiversity, and food. Sustainable solutions that advance social and climate justice are those that emerge from territories grounded in resilient practices. This COP can drive home the lesson that, while agriculture is a major driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss, it need not be: agroecological approaches have proven to boost biodiversity, preserve soil health, and protect forests. 

Finally, Belém can build on the UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action from COP28 in 2023, endorsed by over 150 countries. While declarations are non-binding, they can unlock resources beyond the slower negotiation tracks.

We urge governments to ensure that the U.N. climate negotiations serve the real changemakers in the food system - smallholders, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities - by strengthening democratic governance, local leadership, and upholding food sovereignty.

Hunger and malnutrition are not inevitable. Ending hunger is a political problem, and so is the climate crisis. This is the ethical and moral imperative of our time.