Increasing Ambition in Nationally Determined Contributions Through Agriculture and Food Systems Innovation

The world faces unprecedented urgency to make agriculture and food systems more resilient to climate change and to lower the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions they generate. The next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, due in 2025, offers a unique opportunity to strengthen investment in, and support for, research and innovation that will undergird any serious efforts to transform our agriculture and food systems.

This joint UN Foundation-Climate Focus report, “Increasing Ambition in Nationally Determined Contributions Through Agriculture and Food Systems Innovation: Evidence, foundational analysis, and recommendations for NDCs,” explores how robust inclusion of seven major categories of agriculture and food system innovation in NDCs is relevant for all countries seeking to cultivate transformative investments that increase their climate action ambition. The authors offer recommendations to policymakers and other stakeholders for integrating agriculture and food systems innovation in their NDCs.

The report reviews recent literature to assess the effectiveness of investing in agriculture and food systems innovation for achieving necessary climate and agriculture outcomes. It finds strong evidence to support enhanced national commitment to investing in seven major categories of innovation:

• R&D systems –  Investments in agricultural research improve productivity and economic growth; however, transformative innovation is hampered by inadequate and imbalanced funding and insufficient collaboration across regions and sectors.
• Information systems – New types of data–gathering and analysis have improved the information landscape for agriculture and food, but equitable access and benefits will depend on improved governance systems that promote trust, data-sharing, and steady funding. 
• On-farm production – Despite technological progress, climate-aligned productivity gains at scale will require greater support to producers and value chain actors in adopting appropriate technologies and practices.
• Post-harvest handling – Tactical deployment of appropriate interventions across complex, multi-level food supply chains can increase efficiency and mitigate food losses and waste that generate GHG emissions and increase vulnerability. 
• Markets – Improved market price transparency, changes in sectoral subsidies, and other strategies can better enable and incentivize sustainable agricultural production.
• Finance – To validate new finance models for climate adaptation and mitigation in agriculture and food systems, greater coordination among governments and across sectors can increase fluency with climate-aligned investment needs and opportunities.
• Policy – Holistic, transformative national strategies can deploy under-utilized policy tools and promote whole-of-government approaches to more equitably allocate costs and benefits of climate-aligned sectoral transitions.

The report assesses the prevalence of agriculture and food systems innovation through a comprehensive review of existing NDCs submitted by the countries who are party to the Paris Agreement. While most countries mentioned at least one category of agriculture and food systems innovation in their NDCs, several categories are only modestly included.

In future NDCs, governments can signal their intention to increase and re-balance investment to more effectively incentivize necessary changes in agriculture and food systems. As countries amplify agriculture and food objectives in their NDCs, the likelihood of achieving these objectives will increase with explicit inclusion of measures that support innovation. For governments seeking to increase their climate ambition for this important sector, NDCs can signal national priorities to international partners and investors. While every country will have distinct capacities and needs for agriculture and food systems innovation, most countries can find meaningful opportunities to increase support in all categories of innovation.

This report was commissioned by the Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate and provides the evidence base for the first recommendation of the AIM for Climate Report, “Cultivating Transformative Investments in Climate-Smart Agriculture and Food Systems Innovation”, which calls for enhanced inclusion of climate-smart agriculture and food systems innovation in NDC design and implementation.