From Vision to Action: Aligning climate goals with farmers’ everyday realities

The UNFCCC Farmers Constituency represents farmers worldwide in all their diversity producing food and other agricultural goods for the global population, delivering ecosystem services, including healthy soils and water resources, and contributing to sustainable development. Consistent with the Paris Agreement, climate ambition must prioritize safeguarding food security and agriculture’s vulnerabilities to climate impacts. The climate crisis demands urgency in addressing farmers’ needs and aspirations. We reaffirm our commitment to multilateralism and to working constructively with Parties, the Secretariat and other Constituencies, so that farmers’ realities help shape global goals and action. Meaningful inclusion of farmers’ voices is essential to bringing forward practical solutions where they are most needed.

Fostering a just rural transition leaving no farmer behind.

Transition pathways must reflect the realities of rural economies and farming systems, ensuring fair income and decent livelihoods, investing in training, upskilling, and extension services, and promoting traditional and indigenous knowledge, gender equity and generational renewal.

Translating NDCs 3.0 into concrete practical action for farmers and the planet.

With time running short and ownership in question, farmers’ involvement is critical to turn the new generation of NDCs from abstract targets into real-world solutions bringing us closer to implementing the first GST. Successful climate policies must be codeveloped with implementers and backed by adequate means of implementation and enhanced climate services.

Making finance available, accessible and predictable at farm-level.

Building on the COP29 consensus and constructive discussions between farmers, finance and agriculture negotiators at the 2025 SCF Forum, finance must be available, accessible and predictable for all farmers, particularly women, youth and family farmers.

- The Baku-to-Belém Roadmap to 1.3T is an opportunity to close the adaptation gap while boosting investments in agricultural resilience and dismantling barriers to farmers’ access, especially in developing and vulnerable contexts. This requires diversifying financial tools, strengthening public-private-producers’ partnerships and leveraging farmer organisations and cooperatives as direct access channels and trusted intermediaries.

- The ability of GEF, GCF and Special Funds to deliver for our sector and communities depends on greater involvement of farmers’ organisations in their governance and project design, reasonable access requirements, simplified procedures and shorter project approval times, aligning investments with the agricultural cycle.

- Effective operationalization of the Loss and Damage Fund depends on finalizing the Board’s Active Observers’ Policy next year. Given agriculture’s particular vulnerability, a permanent active observer seat for Farmers, alongside other Constituencies, is key to ensure access and resource allocation respond to real needs, complementing the development and scale-up of agricultural insurance and disaster risk reduction efforts.

- Carbon markets under Art. 6.2 and 6.4 must recognize agriculture, forestry and other land based solutions as integral components of climate action, prioritizing farmers’ rights, the well being of rural communities and food security objectives while avoiding displacement of agricultural land and ensuring that design choices on permanence and compliance remain proportionate and workable in our sector.

Embedding the unique nature of agriculture in the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) framework.

Indicators should capture adaptation at farm level in ways that do not over-burden farmers with data collection. They should also reflect farmers’ distinct role across value chains, account for the diversity of agroecosystems and complexity of our sector, and track finance flows enabling recovery and adoption of climate-resilient practices.

Scaling up mitigation in the agricultural sector.

International frameworks and national GHG inventories must better capture farm-level progress and reflect the climate impacts of biogenic sources and sinks. Farmers need resources to collect data in ways that serve both climate reporting and farm management. Full data transparency and farmer ownership are essential. These efforts should inform the Mitigation Work Programme and help scale up investment-ready solutions in agriculture, including circular economy approaches and the development of commercially viable and locally appropriate technologies, alongside tackling fossil fuel emissions from all sectors.

Ensuring agriculture negotiations remain relevant and future oriented.

SB62 highlighted the need for greater engagement of implementers and the potential for more substantive discussions under the Sharm Joint Work on Agriculture. With only one year before its mandate ends, Parties must seize the moment to think collectively and creatively about agriculture’s unique role in the climate process now and after COP31.