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Nov 13
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The Global Plant Council at COP31 Day4

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Final Thoughts

My final few hours at COP31 were (again) spent in the Food and Agriculture Pavilion.

Firstly we learnt about how different levels of Brazilian state and city government are making changes to support more climate-resilient and sustainable food systems.

A huge benefit of COP is that delegates are able to hear passionate talks from senior politicians, in this case Eduardo Leite who is the Governor of Rio Grade do Sol, which is the 5th largest Brazilian state and is larger than the UK. Where else but COP would you be able to hear him speak with just 50 other people?

Second was the Speed Networking activity, in which ~30 participants had the chance to discuss ‘their COP’ with another delegates in 3-minutes segments. It was great to engage with new people who had a great variety of roles; from an undergrad at Duke University, a Nigerian Reverend and the Senior Scientist at IRRI.

It was this latter discussion with Bjoern Ole Sander that helped me crystalise some thoughts on the value of COP. As mentioned on a prior blog, the activities and interests of the Global Plant Council membership sit at a much ‘lower’-level than pretty much any conversations at COP31. In this context, the GPC cares more about how to generate climate-resilient crops, whilst most COP delegates want to discuss how to fund programs at a much higher level.

No doubt there is real value in having Observer status as there is cache being at COP31 and demonstrates that the GPC are a serious organisation. I think we could have better maximised the networking opportunities at COP, given that so many people are ‘in the room’. These opportunities will likely grow as the GPC becomes more visible at this type of event.

So how to summarise my experience at COP31?

It was very much a worthwhile trip for me to understand the scale of the event and where the GPC sits in the grand scheme of climate conversations.

The most influential people at COP31 don’t know anything about the specific genotypes that can protect food security for literally billions of people; they care about how the money could move to where they think it should go.

Although its lower profile, it think it’s likely that the biennial Biodiversity COP might be more beneficial for the GPC in which to develop lasting collaborations (as we found at COP15 in Montreal).

Three-days was plenty time for me to spend at COP31 so maximum respect for those people who are there for the entire 2 weeks…. they will end up hearing the same buzzwords a lot.

At the higher level it is fantastic that there appears to be a greater focus at COP31 on agriculture and food systems, which will hopefully continue at COP32 in Ethiopia, where food systems are particularly climate- vulnerable.

Hopefully people around the world will benefit from the negotiations at COP31….but the slam-dunk winners are the hoteliers and restaurateurs of Antalya as well as the Turkish Polis and their overtime!

Nov 12
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The Global Plant Council at COP31 Day3

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Smart people building collaborations

So I didn’t find any plant science today but there was again plenty to think about at COP31.

I’m feeling a little under the weather so set off for the meeting a little later and benefitted from a seat on the tram, which is a nice bonus!

I find that the more time you spend at COP31, it makes you think about the purpose of the meeting. I have seen a little coverage of leader speeches but I expect they either said that we on track to address the climate crisis (the rich nations) or criticising the rich nations for not moving fast enough to makes changes and payments (the LMICs).

For a short time I wandered over to the Plenary area and to be honest didn’t really know what was going on. There were plenty of people milling-around, some making ‘content’ (both traditional or new media) and a small number dashing to a seemingly important meeting. Thank-goodness for the media to keep us up to date as on-the-ground you’d have no idea what is happening in the discussion rooms. I can’t imagine how it was before the days of mobile-phones!

I feel more comfortable in the Pavilions where there are plenty of ideas about how to make climate changes. I think this is the real benefit of COP31; as it brings together lots of super smart people from literally all around the world to discuss climate issues (whatever their perspective). This would be impossible to achieve online, so surely it must have great value…..

However I think it is up to debate whether there needs to be *quite* as many people.

On arrival I visited the Africa Pavilion to hear about how carbon credits can be applied to African smallholder farmers. I don’t know much about carbon credits but I think they are a means for (usually Western) companies to offset their emissions by supporting climate-positive projects in the developing world. Putting aside that this seems like nouveau- colonialism, it made me realise that these discussions are much-much higher-level than the subjects with which the GPC is involved/interested. The research of our members is involved with developing the climate resistance crops that might be used by smallholder farmers…. if they receive this carbon-credit funding…. and it seems that so far very little of the available finances have made it to farmers.

Slightly closer to the interests of GPC members came at a CGIAR-FAO session on implementation of mechanisms to cope with multiple climate shocks.

The discussions involved the type of investments that are needed to ensure that farmers have greater resilience to climate shocks, such as El Niño, which are almost guaranteed to occur with global warming now over 1.5ºC. I would argue that the best use of funding is to support ten years (or more) of research that can travel the challenging path between plant scientists and farmers.

It has been very positive at the CGAIR-FAO Pavilion and I hope that I made some good connections that will help GPC to engage with CGIAR. We shall see…

A final half-day tomorrow at COP31 for me, which includes some speed networking at CGIAR!

Nov 10
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The Global Plant Council at COP31 Day2

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Steps, Acronyms and Coffee

COP31 is overwhelming, there is just a lot of it!

Arriving early on Day 2, I missed later traffic chaos (4hrs to travel the 1hr journey) and breezed through registration in 1 minute (apparently it took up-to 5hrs on Day 1). After taking the obligatory photo at the #COP31 sign I set out to explore the venue… and there was plenty of exploring to do!

I wandered through the still-waking Blue Zone and then into the mostly-slumbering Green Zone! It was nice to see some people at around 9am in the Green Zone as the Science and Technology Pavilion (all EVs) and Climate Finance Pavilion (all banks) were filling up.

The issue of finance is a recurring theme as almost every talk mentioned financing at some point. Of course this is no surprise but it feels as though that people need to be extra-convinced to finance saving the planet, whereas with most other areas there is just ‘finance’.

By the time I trekked back, the Blue Zone had come to life with seemingly every Pavilion supplying strong Turkish coffee for their delegates! As a tea drinker it was disappointed to not be similarly serviced.

In general the Pavilion’s are very impressive with an incredible array of National pride on show! Each of the 100+ Pavilions have a schedule of regular talks so there is often something that piques the curiosity.

My plan was to join any session that mentioned ‘Plants’….. of which there are zero… so I widened the focus to ‘Agriculture’. This took me to three sessions at the Food and Agriculture Pavilion, which is co-sponsored by CGIAR and FAO.

At their opening ceremony it was nice to hear about the collaboration between FAO and CGIAR, who both highlighted that topics of Food and Agriculture are now playing a small but increasing role in COP discussions.

COP31was the first COP to include a thematic day on ‘Food, Agriculture and Health’, although this was on Day 1 when many people had not yet arrived or were stuck in queues… However better to be in-than-out so hopefully in coming years it plays an even more prominent role.

There are a noticeable number of younger delegates at the meeting, four of whom featured in a panel on use of renewable energy for support regenerative agriculture. To be honest I don’t think the session needed to be labelled with regenerative Ag as using renewables to support ‘regular agriculture’ would be equally welcomed… but perhaps it speaks to the relatively small uptake of current regenerative practices.

The final FoodAg Pavilion session introduced a new (lengthy) report on The State of African Agricultural Adapation. There was a little (plant) science mentioned by the CGIAR panellist but otherwise it was mostly a discussion about the required international finance to support African agricultural development.

Download report PDF here.

Although I discussed the GPC with a few delegates, it was a quiet day for me. As someone used to attending scientific conferences where speakers show scientific data, it’s a little unsatisfying when most presenters eloquently speak about what is needed albeit without ‘showing their workings’. This is not a criticism as clearly COP is the place for big ideas!

We go hunting for plant science again tomorrow 😊

Nov 10
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The Global Plant Council at COP31 Day 1

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Day 1 Travel: Overwhelming Anticipation

This week I have the honour of attending the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP31) taking place in Antalya, Turkiye. The Global Plant Council (GPC) has accredited Observer status (NGO) for COP31, which means we can nominate representatives to attend the in-person meeting.

There will be198 countries represented at the table with approximately 100, 000 delegates.

It seems that COP31 is rather popular so only one daily place was allocated to the GPC… and the early reports of long queues for accreditation seem to speak to event popularity!

I will be attending from Nov 10-12 and my GPC colleague Deena Errampalli will attend Nov 13-19.

Although GPC represents a global cohort of up to 30,000 plant scientists, we are a financial and organisational minnow at this level and don’t have the resources to organise any specific events at COP31.

GPC Policy Reports

However, GPC has published three Policy Reports that highlight the importance of future plant science research for the mitigation of human-induced climate change.

The first GPC report highlights the OneHealth implications of not supporting plant science. We report that the metabolism of two staple crops is significantly impacted by higher temperatures. Plant science research has demonstrated that in higher temperatures, a rice crop will exhibit a major reduction in nutrient-load, including in levels of folate, which will significant impact the health of 600 million vulnerable people. Importantly we highlight the importance of measuring nutrient quality in crops and not only the quantity of grain produced under difference climate conditions.

Secondly, we highlight that when Cassava is grown under higher temperatures, it produces an undetectable increase of cyanide, which in turn causes increased incidence of Konzo, a severe debilitated disease.

It is important to highlight these cases as they demonstrate that climate changes is directly impacted human health through the alteration of staple crops.

You can find here the OneHealth Report.

The second GPC policy report makes the case that providing funding for Plant Science is an essential mechanism to combat climate change.

You can find here the PS Report.

The final report has been written in collaboration with the International Safe Cassava Network and specifically highlights the increasing incidence of Konzo in Southern Africa where the crop is an important staple.

You can find here the Cassava Report.

Preparing for COP31

The lead-up to COP31 has been a little confusing as until recently, the event details have been rather sparse! We know that there is a Green Zone, which is open to any interested delegates and a Blue Zone, which is only open to accredited delegates (including GPC representatives), although until recently it hasn’t been clear what is actually happening in each zone.

Each Zone contains a set of Pavilions, which are organised by governments and/or NGOs. These are the location for the numerous side-events that shadow governmental sessions. These provide an opportunity for organisations to promote both their actions and ideas about how best to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Presumably there is evidence that these actions and discussions will ultimately impact the decisions made by politicians at either the local, national or international level.

As a previous outside observer of COP I think I have a commonly held view that the COP31’s are a bit of the talking shop. They annually bring the climate agenda to the forefront of the world’s media…. albeit without seemingly making a significant impact on climate policy. This is for undoubtedly complex reasons linked to a lack of engagement by major emitting nations and coming to agreement about financial reparations for LMICs who have been most profoundly impacted by emissions from the Western World over the past two centuries.

I am also a believer of not knocking something until you have tried it so I very much look forward to being on the ground in Turkiye. At COP31 GPC will have a watching brief where we attend relevant events and hopefully make connections with whom we can collaborate for future initiatives.

The recent launch of the detailed COP31 app now provides plenty of information about the Pavilions and events in the Blue and Green Zones.

As such I have a rough schedule of activities to attend but I expect that these will change as I learn how COP31 works ‘on the ground’.

It is a small shame that the thematic focus on Day 1 is ‘Food and Agriculture’, which is the most relevant topic to the GPC. However, my impression is that COP31 has a long lead-time so there will be plenty of relevant activities occurring during my time in Antalya.

Sadly I will only have a single day in the Green Zone, as it is closed to regular delegates due to high-level Leader’s meetings on Nov 11-12!

I’m expecting three busy days at COP31….but I only hope that I’m not queuing for too long!