Tens of thousands of people joined Glasgow’s Global Day of Action demonstration on saturday, with scores of other protests around the world, at the COP26 summit itself delegates marked nature and land-use day, with countries coming together to plan how to keep intact at least 30% of the planet’s land and ocean for nature.
Meanwhile forty-five governments pledge urgent action and investment to protect nature and shift to more sustainable ways of farming. More than double that number of high profile companies from a range of sectors committed to being ‘nature positive’, agreeing to work towards halting and reversing the decline of nature by 2030.
Commitments include major supermarkets pledging to cut their environmental impact across climate and nature-loss, and fashion brands guaranteeing the traceability of their materials.
Five UK supermarkets promised to halve their environmental impact by 2030 with CEOs from Co-Op, M&S, Sainsbury’s Tesco, and Waitrose, sating they would work with the World Wide Fund for Nature to halve the amount of global warming that the weekly food shop causes.
At least 26 nations set out new commitments to change their agricultural policies to become more sustainable and less polluting, and to invest in the science needed for sustainable agriculture and for protecting food supplies against climate change.
Examples of national commitments aligned to this agenda include Brazil’s plan to scale its ABC+ low carbon farming programme to 72m hectares, saving 1 billion tonnes of emissions by 2030; Germany’s pledge to lower emissions from land use by 25m tonnes by 2030; and the UK’s aim to engage 75% of farmers in low carbon practices by 2030.
The UK also announced funding of £500m to support the implementation of the Forest, Agriculture and Commodity Trade (FACT) Roadmap launched last week, in which 28 countries are working together to protect forests while promoting development and trade.
A further £65m will support a ‘Just Rural Transition’ to help developing countries shift policies and practices to more sustainable agriculture and food production.
Commitments made by countries over the weekend reportedly will help to implement the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Us, which is now endorsed by 134 countries covering 91% of the world’s forests. The Declaration aims to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030.
COP26 President, Alok Sharma said: “If we are to limit global warming and keep the goal of 1.5C alive, then the world needs to use land sustainably and put protection and restoration of nature at the heart of all we do.
“The commitments being made…show that nature and land use is being recognised as essential to meeting the Paris Agreement goals, and will contribute to addressing the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss.”
The World Bank committed to spend $25 billion in climate finance annually to 2025 through its Climate Action Plan, including a focus on agriculture and food systems.
The big private sector commitment from the UK on Saturday came from five supermarket chains who promised to half their environmental impact by 2030, including cutting carbon emissions, tackling climate change and transforming the food waste and packaging they produce. Targets will be published by the end of 2022.
Sunday was a quiet day at the summit, with delegates largely taking breath for an intensive final week of negotiations and discussions.
But one event – the Under 2 Coalition general assembly – of which the Welsh Government is a founding member, went ahead, with Julie James, Wales’ Minister for Climate Change present.
The Under2 Coalition brings together 260 states and sub-national governments, representing 1.75 billion people and 50% of the global economy.
The Coalition has committed to keeping global temperature rises to well below 2°C with efforts to reach 1.5°C. 35 states and regions in the Coalition have committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050 or earlier.
