New $282 Million Gef Program Targets Climate and Environment Action Through Agriculture and Food Systems

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) launched a new program, aimed at strengthening efforts to transform global agrifood systems – from farm to table - so that they are sustainable, nature positive, resilient, inclusive, and pollution-free.

Funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the Food Systems Integrated Program (FSIP) was launched on Agrifood System Day at the 16th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP16) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The program will channel $282 million in GEF financing and an estimated $1.8 billion of co-financing towards global environmental benefits for biodiversity, land, and climate change, along with socioeconomic benefits of improved food security, nutrition, and livelihoods.

The program targets agrifood systems of four sectors – crops (maize, rice, and wheat), commodities (cocoa, palm oil and soy), livestock, and aquaculture – across 32 countries: Angola, Argentina, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Chad, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Ghana, Grenada, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Namibia, Nauru, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Türkiye, and Uganda.

Countries and communities will develop and strengthen policies, value chains, practices, and investment plans for key agrifood sectors through the program. The program aims to mitigate methane emissions in the livestock and rice sectors, as well as deforestation in livestock and palm oil sectors. The program will promote aquaculture as an alternative source of protein and income and integrated landscape management as an alternative to unsustainable land use in producing wheat and maize. In addition, it will also support sustainable practices for key commodities to ensure long-term environmental and economic benefits.

The program comes amid growing international attention to the key role of food and agriculture systems at the recent UN environmental Conferences of the Parties (COPs) for three different conventions. These include the launch of the Agri-NBSAPs Initiative at the CBD COP16 for biodiversity, and the Harmoniya Initiative launched at the UNFCCC COP29 for climate. All three COPs have prominently featured discussions on financing - agrifood systems accounted for less than 5% of total global climate finance (2019/2020) and 23 percent of the total climate-related development finance (2022), a decline from 37% in the previous decade.

The Food Systems Integrated Program builds upon nearly a decade of GEF investments in global programs on food systems, including The Good Growth Partnership, Resilient Food Systems and the Food Systems, Land Use, and Restoration Impact Program. Approved and designed after the UN Food Systems Summit, the FSIP program will support countries to meet commitments for the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, Paris Agreement on climate change, and Land Degradation Neutrality.