This year, world leaders will gather for three major environmental summits within just three months, creating a rare opportunity to align climate, biodiversity and land agendas into one shared action plan.
The three Rio Conventions - on land, biodiversity and climate, have held their COPs in the same year before, but the scale of today’s challenges makes integration more urgent. Rising food prices, supply chain disruptions and the onset of a “super” El Niño are exposing vulnerabilities in global food systems. During the last such El Niño, more than 60 million people faced acute hunger and water shortages.
Food systems contribute one-third of greenhouse gas emissions and drive 70% of land-based biodiversity loss. Yet they also represent one of the greatest opportunities for positive change: cutting emissions, restoring ecosystems, strengthening food security and improving livelihoods. Economically, transforming food systems could be worth up to $10 trillion annually, but agrifood systems remain underfunded in climate finance.
The first major opportunity to address food systems comes at the 17th UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) meeting in Mongolia. With up to 40% of Earth’s land degraded, costing economies $900 billion annually, restoring healthy land is essential for food production and shared environmental goals.
Mongolia illustrates how local action can drive change. Overgrazing and pasture degradation in the Eastern Steppe threatened biodiversity and soil health. The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, WWF and FAO worked with pastoral communities to revive traditional grazing practices.
Herders identified priority areas for resting, rotation and restoration, incorporating these into regional landscape management plans. More than 845,000 hectares of degraded pastureland have been rehabilitated, improving soil health and supporting wildlife.
Leaders of UNCCD, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have recognised the need for integration. Through a Joint Liaison Group, a Joint Capacity-building Programme and shared work on planning and finance, they are laying the foundations for joined-up action.
Nature-positive agriculture, whether rotational grazing, regenerative farming, agroecology or agroforestry, aligns food production with ecosystem restoration. Appetite for such solutions is growing, but scaling them requires urgency.
Extreme weather events are increasing, and vulnerable rural communities - often responsible for growing the world’s food, are most at risk. Food systems transformation offers a blueprint for joined-up implementation, but governments must act at the pace these crises demand.
This triple COP year should be remembered not for three separate conferences, but for the moment governments accelerated interconnected solutions to match interconnected challenges.
