Thank you co-facilitator. I am Pang Delgra speaking on behalf of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice. 

While we welcome the sense of urgency to move forward, we warn about using external multistakeholder initiatives as a coordination mechanism for this Joint work. These initiatives threaten the democratic spirit that the Convention embodies, are influenced by corporate interests, and lack adequate representation of civil society and marginalized communities. They enable false solutions —- such as carbon offsets, ‘carbon farming’,  and ‘carbon capture’— that are heavily promoted by the agribusiness sector to keep business as usual in place of food sovereignty and agroecology as a real solution.

We call for a revision of the definition of “sustainable agriculture” in Annex 3, par. 2, and urge you to closely examine and avoid references to Climate Smart Agriculture, Nature-Based Solutions, Sustainable Intensification’, Regenerative agriculture, and other approaches that are not properly defined and have proven to be harmful or ineffective. Keeping this in the text would set an absolutely terrible precedent and unscrutinized definition of “sustainable approaches in agriculture” into UN language. 

We welcome workshops on Systemic and holistic approaches to climate action and would like to see these workshops open to observers. We also hope that to make up for the time lost they would be done earlier than indicated in the text, and start at COP29 and to hold more sessions.

Reminded by the recent floods, fires, and heat waves affecting every region worldwide, we urge you to respond to the urgent need to build resilient food systems.