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Excellencies, dear Ministers

Food systems across the world are facing multiple pressures. Climate change, yes, but also biodiversity decline, soil degradation, water stress and air pollution.

We have to act on those pressures, and we have to make our agri-food systems more sustainable.

In Europe, we’re acting as fast as we can. Our Farm-to-Fork Strategy aims to accelerate our transition to a food system that’s more sustainable. One flagship initiative in the strategy, the proposal for a legislative framework for sustainable food systems (FSFS), should be adopted by the end of 2023. Its goal is to both accelerate and ease the transition.

But we can only do as much on our own. The world needs a food system that is sustainable on the global scale. After, all, rethinking global food systems is at the heart of achieving the UN SDGs. It’s also at the heart of the commitments under the Climate Agreement and the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Excellencies, dear colleagues: When we speak about food production, we also have to speak about nature.

As our biodiversity is suffering, the more we do to restore it, the better for food production.

It’s one of the terrible ironies of our age, the way we are destroying nature to grow our food. Right now, the main driver of global deforestation is agricultural conversion. It is therefore essential to switch to agricultural systems that are more sustainable.

Addressing the global water crisis is also equally important. We need to take the outcomes of the recent UN Water Conference forward through all the relevant processes. The FAO is of key importance in that regard.

Food from effectively managed fisheries, and from sustainable aquaculture, plays a key role in food security, nutrition and the livelihoods of billions of people.

That means applying zero tolerance to IUU fishing.

That also means ensuring that the global growth of aquaculture does not come at the expense of the environment, or of social conditions. That is why we pushed so hard for the adoption of ambitious FAO Guidelines on Sustainable Aquaculture. We now look forward to their adoption and implementation.

Turning now to the financial dimension: right now, there is a massive gap in the public and private climate finance. Programming the transformation of the global sustainable food system must be a priority of the upcoming Annual Meeting of the World Bank Group and the IMF in September in Marrakech.

Here too, the EU is doing as much as it can.

With EUR 23 billion in 2021, the EU is the number one provider of public climate action finance in the world. The EU also committed to double external funding to biodiversity to EUR 7 billion until 2027 and, together with our Member States, we are the biggest donors of international biodiversity finance.

Following the last Nutrition for Growth Summit, the EU has also scaled up its financial support for international food security.

This support could be associated with a global roadmap to build climate resilient and biodiversity positive food systems. The key components of that roadmap, and their digital support system, could both be part of the UNFCCC COP negotiations related to the ongoing Joint Work on Agriculture and Food Security.

The last thing I would mention is our EU policies for cooperation and development: it goes without saying that we will continue to support partner countries in the transition to food systems that are safe and sustainable. And that applies first and foremost to the most vulnerable countries and regions.

Thank you.