Press Conference: Food Systems for Nature: Closing the Implementation Gap, UN Convention on Biodiversity - COP 17

Good morning, everyone. I think we are due to start round about now, so I'm going to get started. I know we have some participants who are joining us online, remotely. Welcome to all of you, both in the room and online. My name is Emma Williams. I'm the head of secretariat for the Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation, ACF, and I'm really pleased to welcome you this morning. I'm going to say a few words of introduction and then turn to our three country speakers. So without further ado, I'd like to begin by introducing the ACF. So the Alliance of Champions for Food Systems Transformation is a coalition of ambitious countries committed to driving bold, coordinated action. They were launched at the UNFCCC COP 28 in Dubai, so three years ago. And signatories to the Alliance, the countries that are members, are taking a whole of government approach. So they're working right across multiple ministries, and that's key for what we're discussing today, to transform their food systems for people, planet, and nature. So how is this relevant to the CBD COP? Well, COP17 hosts, of course, the first global review of progress under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. More than half its 23 targets depend on how food is produced, sourced, and consumed. Food systems drive 80% of deforestation, 70% of biodiversity loss on land, and 50% in freshwater, while agriculture uses almost half of the world's habitable land. By shifting away from destructive practices, food systems can be a positive force for nature recovery. The Global Review has given us an honest picture. Most countries have set their targets, but far fewer are on track to meet them. The gap isn't one of ambition. It's the gap between commitment on paper and change on the ground. Anyone who's worked inside government knows how difficult implementation is. Turning a shared goal into shared delivery, it means aligning ministries, agreeing who leads, putting money behind the plan, building the data to track it, and keeping it going through changes in leadership and circumstance. It's slow, often unglamorous work, and it needs political backing from the very top. That's why I want to recognize the leadership in this room. The members of our alliance come from the global north and south. They face very different biodiversity challenges, from rainforests and savannas to river deltas and coastal mangroves, and their food systems all look very different. Their approaches differ too. But what they have in common is a decision taken at the highest level to treat food as part of the solution to the loss of nature and to do the difficult work of joining up government to deliver it. So I'm delighted today to be joined by Minister Joal Emmanuel Abdallay, Minister of Environment and Climate Change of Sierra Leone, co-chair of the Alliance of Champions. Secretary Corinna Pimenta, and she's National Secretary for Bioeconomy at Brazil's Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, and Brazil is the other co-chair of the ACF. And Mr. Le Minh Tuan from the Department of International Cooperation at Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture and Environment. Thank you so much to all of you for joining us today. So today our members are launching a joint ministerial statement, which is called Food Systems for Nature: Closing the Implementation Gap, together with a snapshot of how they're all doing against the biodiversity targets. And this joint statement is from six countries, three of which are represented on the panel here today. So that's Sierra Leone, Brazil, Vietnam, and also Cambodia, Norway, and Italy. So the snapshot sets out the biodiversity commitments that our ACF members have made, what's actually changing on the ground, and how they're delivering against four global biodiversity framework targets that are really closely tied to food systems. It's not perfect, there's still a lot to be done, but it is a solid picture of what implementation looks like in practice. Restoring degraded lands, reducing nutrient pollution, cutting food loss and waste, and the institutions and budgets behind them. It's significant for several reasons. The timing comes at the first global review of the Kunming-Montreal Framework, when the UN's found a lot of countries off track, and it's named agriculture, fisheries, and forestry as sectors that must act. The statement today is a direct response, a group of governments saying, yes, we accept that, and here's what we're doing about food. It's significant who's saying it. So it's governments from four continents, north and south, donors and recipients, with different ecosystems and economies, and they've agreed one text. At a COP where finance and other issues divide countries along sometimes familiar lines, a cross-regional agreement on food and nature is notable. It's putting food as central to change. A ministerial statement at a biodiversity COP puts food systems right on the record as central to delivering the biodiversity targets, and it backs the review's call to go beyond environment ministries alone. It's about delivery, not just new pledges. It sets a shared position on finance. It's about asks on quality, access, predictability, and reaching smallholders. And it links, of course, the Rio conventions, biodiversity commitments with land and climate through food. So, without any further comment from me, I'd like to turn to our speakers. So first of all, Minister Abdullai, Sierra Leone has made food security a national priority. Can you tell us a bit about what it's taken to make that happen across government? Thanks.

Food security, it's not just an economic issue for us, it's also a national security issue. And what we've seen over the years in Sierra Leone is a steady decline in the yields that farmers get, probably over a couple of decades. And in many cases, farmers didn't really understand what was causing this. I think for us, the climate issue and the biodiversity issue are two sides of the same coin, in that there is a negative feedback loop between the two of them. And with the decline in yields, what we have seen is farmers need more land to produce the same amount of food. So they're clearing-- we see more clearing and clearing of land, and that's led to habitat loss. across the country. What used to be rainforest is now grassland for large parts of the country. So for us at the Ministry of the Environment, it's clear we cannot really deal with biodiversity issues without dealing with one of the major drivers of deforestation, which is food production. And which means that we need to work together, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of the Environment. The Ministry of Agriculture as a policy, doesn't stop supporting upland farming, because that is one of the drivers of deforestation. But even the interventions that we do at the Ministry of the Environment put a focus on doing transformation in agriculture. You cannot really talk about restoring degraded land doing reforestation or stopping deforestation if you don't deal with the fact that the people who are growing our food need to live. They need livelihoods which can sustain their families. They need to produce enough food to feed their families. So our interventions focus on working with the Ministry of Agriculture to transform how we are producing food. And what do I mean by that? Like moving towards less slash and burn agriculture, supporting the farmers to make this transition, and trying to working with them to increase productivity. Because if you increase productivity for the same plot of land over time, then these farmers are not going to be engaging in practices which drive deforestation, because they won't need to be moving around every couple of years to find more fertile soil. So that's one of the major ways we are working with the Ministry of Agriculture. We're embedding ourselves within the Ministry of Agriculture as part of their interventions, because there's a symbiotic relationship. If the ecosystems are healthy, then food production will yield good results. If the ecosystems are not healthy, then we'll see lower yields, which will then mean that the farmers will be clearing more land. which will then reduce result in lower yields. And we're trying to reverse that circle to make it more virtuous. So there is collaboration there between those two ministries.

Thanks so much, Minister. And yeah, I think Sierra Leone's Feed Salone flagship initiative on food systems transformation, your president's, of course, leading, is such a good example of exactly what you've just described, that joined up approach. So I'm going to turn from Sierra Leone to our other co-chair, Brazil. So Secretary Pimenta, Brazil, of course, holds ecosystems that matter far beyond its borders. How are you connecting their protection with people's livelihoods? Thank you.

Thank you so much for being here, my distinguished colleagues, Minister of Sierra Leone, the representative from Vietnam. Very happy to share the experience of Brazil in this side. We are very, at the Biodiversity COP, we know that food systems are the central to the challenge. Protecting nature and ensuring food systems require changes not only in the farming practices, but also in the economy incentives, institutions, and investments behind them. And I think the Alliance, it's a very important place for us to bring together countries and share experiences and accelerate this change. Talking about Brazil, two weeks ago, we announced the latest, the lowest deforestation rate we have since 1998 when we started to count it. And this is a firm response and commitment from our President Lula and our government to put in place all the mechanisms that will help reduce the loss of biodiversity and forests across the country in the different biomes. Furthermore, we are also committed to the target of restoration 12 million hectares of Brazil land up to 2030, according to the NDCs of Climate COP. And we have so far started restoration of 3.5, 3.4 million hectares. It is still lagging behind, but it shows progress. And I'm quoting this to talk about We can start these processes of restoring ecosystems, of diminishing deforestation, but it will only last if we create incentives and distortions that we have in the food systems and in production systems. And that's why this year, Brazil has launched a plan that is connecting different parts of our economy, the agriculture, smallholding farming, bio-industrialization, and ecosystem services. and economies based on biodiversity into the national bioeconomy development plan. And this is a connection of integrating different policies that we have in these economic sectors, but showing how we are looking to biodiversity as a strategic asset and something that we have to value to keep up with our targets here at MStats and also in the climate call. So this plan has a wide variety of strategies to agriculture, to bio-industrialization, to bioenergy, and things like that. But I wanted to quote on three approaches that I think are very valuable for these discussions. First of all, for us, all these targets have three components that we are going to highlight. is that it has a territorial approach in the implementation of these policies in the ground, because in a big country as ours, it is difficult to have the national level to the local level policy reach. So we created what we call the nucleus or hubs of social bioeconomy, of bioeconomy for IPLCs. and also restoration hubs that we look into the value chains in the local level. And this for us is an opportunity to connect the different policies from social development, small farming agriculture, and environment in the whole package. The other part is that We are looking to how emerge these ecosystems of support to these smallholder farmers and these small businesses that are there, looking to innovation, connecting with all our commitment here at the Protocol Nagoya in the ABS system, but also looking into a portfolio of policies from school meals, program of agricultural acquisition programs to balance and other opportunities. And the third point that I wanted to highlight is the variety of financial instruments that we have been looking as part of this strategy, not only believing that we have one strategy to reach out to the smallholder farmers in the countryside, but a portfolio of solutions from rural credit, to blended finance mechanisms that are bringing the private sector to invest in these areas, and also a very innovative approach on payment for ecosystem services associated to these value chains. Because when you're producing in the forest, part of the costs of producing in the forest or in the systems are connected to the protection of the territory and the management of the territory, and this does not feed into the costs of the production system. So with Ecosystem Services Payments associated, we are seeing an opportunity to reinforce and to accelerate the development of these important activities. And we know that part of this, looking to the local economies, and that's why the territorial approach for us is so important, because it creates the infrastructure needed to understand the value chains there and to transform that and connect not only with local, but regional economies. And at last, as we are at COP, biodiversity and opportunities like that to share these practices are very important to have here. I wanted to highlight highlight that we have proposed here a space to discuss sustainable use of biodiversity, understanding that products and services, like we are talking here in the transformation of food systems, are at the core of this discussion, and we should have at COP Biodiversity a place to share opportunities as we have in this alliance. And therefore, this is one of the three pillars of the convention, and yet, the list developed here, and this imbalance shows that we can bring opportunities like the Alliance and others to reinforce the discussion on sustainable use of biodiversity, looking into the things that we are saying here as important for my colleagues. At last, I think that's it for now. Thank you.

Thanks very much. So I'm going to turn finally to you, Mr. Tuan. So of course, Vietnam quite recently took the bold step of bringing its agriculture and environment ministries together. What has that changed in practice? Thank you.

Thank you very much for being here. I think that when we merge two ministers together, that is perfect because we can manage in overall the agricultural sector and environment sector. So I think that is more convenient to work in cross-sector together. So, yeah, that was a question. I think that's very convenient when we merge two ministries together. We are now Ministry of Agriculture and Environment. Yes. I would like to talk about the showcase in Vietnam for the biodiversity conservation in rice production. You know that with the political will of the government of Vietnam, we have many different programs, but we have a low carbon crop production program. Beside that, we have a program, 1 million hectare of high quality and low carbon rice in the Mekong Delta. So in this program, we change the practice, the traditional practice of farmer to a new practice. You know that the traditional practice of farmer, they use more inputs, but even they get less. But in this new practice, the farmer, the rice farmer, they use less input, like less seed, less chemical fertilizer, less labor. Less water, less herbicide, pesticide, but they gain more. So when they apply new practice, so you see that we can the biodiversity in the field is better. Like in the rice field, there are stream crab and some other kind of insect or some different kind of We changed the practice, that is the way that we apply for food system transformation in Vietnam to protect the environment. You know that when we apply that model, we reduce GHG emission, and we keep the environment very cleaner than before. Because we don't use chemical fertilizer, less chemical fertilizer. So water and the environment there is very good for the type of fish or shrimp to live. So we have a different model like rice, shrimp. So growing rice, but also raising shrimp in the same area. So you know that with this model, I think in Vietnam, we scale up. Step by step, we have 1 million hectares. Now we almost apply 300 and 350 hectares of high quality, low carbon rice. We apply the new practice, but now we scale up to 1 million hectares. So in this case, we scale up all the rice sector of the country. So when we apply the new practice, we conserve the environment. We have a very good environment, and we can create more biodiversity for the environment. Thank you.

Thank you so much. We've got five minutes for questions, so I'd like to open it up now. We have got one question come in online. That's from Reuters. So this is a question for all three countries. It's a nice big one. What are your country's ambitions for CBD COP 17, and what would be a successful outcome? I'm going to ask you to answer that very quickly so we have time for any other questions online or in the room. And I'm going to come to you first, Minister Abdoulaye. Thank you.

I mean, what we've always pushed for is means of implementation. So that's technical assistance, technology transfer, and finance also. Because for many of these communities, that's what's going to help with the transition. The technology transfer and the technical assistance helps immediately, but also having access to finance means that they can actually invest in the technology that enables the transition. Many of these farmers understand how their practices are affecting them locally. and are willing, are keen on having the technical capacity as well as the access to capital to make the transition. So that's why we push for those things here. And for us, it's, you know, the biodiversity aspect is the main thing because that's they see it, but it also is the fact that it affects the climate. So it's a double whammy for most of our farmers across Sierra Leone.

Thank you very much. Secretary Pimenta.

Well, I would say three priorities. Agreeing with the distinguished minister, yes, we are looking for means of implementation, especially meeting the target of our financial commitments under the 200 million dollars a year for biodiversity, and we are lagging behind this commitment. The second one for us is to continue constructing the Cali Fund as a means, also an important means of implementation of the ADS system under the DSI evolving agenda. And I'll say the third one is what I mentioned previously, is that COP can correct the imbalance that we have under the three pillars of the Convention, looking to sustainable use of biodiversity as one pillar, important area of work of countries that will encompass all these agendas and will help us deliver the results of CUMI Montreal commitments.

Thanks very much. Mr. Chuan.

With this scope, you mean that with this scope? Yeah, my country, we commit to implement the climate framework. And we commit to mobilize our resource for development, for sustainable development, to ensure some program. We have a program, low carbon crop production. and low carbon program, 1 million hectare of high quality, low carbon rice. But we scale up and keep applying the practice that reduce GHG emission to protect the environment. And we think that the most important now is social economic development that we take like Biodiversity is essential for social economic development of the country. So, yeah, so with my country, we do our best to protect the biodiversity and for sustainable development of the agricultural environment sector of Vietnam. Thank you.

Thank you very much. We've just about got time for one more quick question. Yeah, please, can you give us your name and outlet, and if it's to a particular country? Thank you.

Hi, I'm Genevieve from Environmental Finance. It's to any of the panelists. What's the role of the private sector within this and how can sort of international financial institutions get involved in any of these projects or themes?

Thanks very much. That's not a quick question, but we'll do our best. So I'll turn to Minister Abdelai first if you've got thoughts on that. Thanks.

A couple of ways. One is And financial services, creating instruments that would make it easy for farmers to insure whatever they're growing, but also have access to credit. So that's one. And the second one is in logistics. Because there's two aspects of this, right? You want the farmers to increase their yields in a way that's sustainable, but you also want to reduce their post-harvest losses. When you do those two, then they have their incomes stabilized to where they don't engage in these destructive practices. I think those are the two areas where there's huge opportunity for the private sector to invest. But they'll make significant returns while also helping the environment.

Thanks very much. Any final, any thoughts on that from Brazil or Vietnam?

I have one more. Because private sector, the question about private sector role, the private sector role is the most important for agriculture environment because they are the intermediate. So they cooperate with farmer. So I mean that in all kind of agricultural value chain. So private sector, they cooperate with the producer, here is farmer. So for example, the European market, what they require? So the private sector, they request the farmer to produce following that requirement. For example, the European market request organic coffee. So they require very high standards. So the private sector, we cooperate with farmer. Like for example, for one million hectare, we have a very good cooperation with the private sector. And they support for farmer, like building capacity for farmer. They work very closely with farmer to apply the new production protocol that reduce the input costs and gain more and less impact to the environment. So I think that the role of biotech is very important. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Brazil, Secretary Pinheiro.

Yes. I would say there are lots of opportunities for private sector to participate, both in the financial side. I think the mechanisms that were created in Brazil for blended finance between public bonds and leveraging private investment was a very important. mechanisms called EcoInvest, and it shows that we can direct investments toward these ecological transformation value chains if you put the right incentives for private sector to continue to invest with us. And I think on the value chain, one of the targets of our bioeconomy policy is to look into the value chain and the bioindustrialization, and this means lots of transfer of technology and partnerships between farmers that we wanted to see bioindustrialization if they wanted to do, but also across with the partnerships of private sector, it can evolve towards a better structured value chain in the food systems. This is very important.

Thank you very much. That's all we've got time for today. We have to finish now. I'd like to thank our participants for joining us today and for your words and for illustrating such a range of different approaches to what's fundamentally the same challenge. Thank you also to those of you in the room and online for taking the time to join us. There are some QR codes down here which will link you to both the ministerial statement and also the biodiversity snapshot we've been talking about. And we've got Jenny Briggs from Greenhouse Media down here if there are any follow-up questions or indeed for our panelists. I guess I just leave you with one final thought. So I think this ACF biodiversity snapshot, it shows what it takes to turn this into action, I guess. So mandates, institutions, budgets that put nature and resilience at the heart of how we produce food. The solutions exist, we know that, and this is how we're going to scale them. Thank you very much.