The UK today launched the Forest, Agriculture and Commodity Trade (FACT) Dialogue, which will bring together key countries exporting agricultural products and the countries consuming these products to discuss how to make this process greener and more sustainable.
COP26 President-Designate, Alok Sharma, was joined by ministers from more than 18 different countries, including Brazil and South Korea, to kick start this new initiative which will take collaborative action through 2021 to November’s climate conference and beyond.
The dialogue is designed to agree principles of action that can be put forward prior to the COP26 meeting.
Sharma said ‘This is about working together to protect our precious forests while enhancing livelihoods and supporting economic development and food security, which is one of our key priorities as we work towards COP26 in Glasgow later this year.’
Protecting the food supplies for the future is a major talking point for the meeting in November as well as a key area of concern for many businesses. Peter Clare, Managing Director of Environmental Crop Management, has long spoken about the need for a cohesive, safe and effective strategy to safeguard soil quality.
In his article for The Parliamentary Review saying on behalf of his organisation that ‘We undertake many collaborative research projects and partnerships to investigate how best to produce food safely’ and that as a result of Brexit ‘The future of the UK as an independent, self-determining country presents an opportunity to review our approach to agriculture’.
As well as launching the FACT dialogue, Alok Sharma also announced the release of the Dasgupta Review which is looking at the economics of biodiversity and in a foreword from David Attenborough says that ‘The Dasgupta Review at last puts biodiversity at its core and provides the compass that we urgently need. In doing so, it shows us how, by bringing economics and ecology together, we can help save the natural world at what may be the last minute – and in doing so, save ourselves' Photo by Mat Reding on Unsplash
