The first-ever day devoted to food and agriculture at the United Nations’ annual climate conference was expected to be momentous. But some of the buzz fizzled at the gathering in Dubai on Sunday after the U.N. released the first part of its much-anticipated “roadmap” to easing hunger and reducing climate pollution from food and agriculture, a source of about a third of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. It was far from the groundbreaking proposal that climate advocates hoped for. They say it lacks a vision to move away from chemical fertilizers and an industrial livestock industry that emits an astonishing amount of methane.
“The roadmap fails to name the fact that industrial agriculture is the second largest cause of emissions on the planet,” said Teresa Anderson, who leads the global climate justice program at ActionAid International, a humanitarian organization. “It sort of dances around the elephant in the room by refusing to name the real problem. It’s a ‘trying to please people’ sort of report, without calling anyone out.”
