MINNEAPOLIS—Today, in response to the launch of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s launch of its anticipated Roadmap to achieving SDG2 without breaching the 1.5˚ C Threshold: A Global Roadmap, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy Executive Director Sophia Murphy, Ph.D., issued the following statement:

"FAO’s Roadmap offers a welcome focus on the right to food in the cacophony of food interests that have descended on COP. The report mentions a host of critical issues, including farm income, farm worker rights, women’s empowerment, social protection, and the need for adequate, balanced, diversified and moderate diets.

Disappointingly, the report neglects to call on big agricultural companies to make real emissions reductions, especially in rich countries where cutting methane and nitrous oxide emissions from industrial animal operations is a low-hanging fruit with huge collateral benefits for biodiversity, rural economies and healthy diets. Some of the roadmap’s recommendations on energy — in particular, on CCS, biofuels and biogas — threaten to undermine the very goals of the report.

We look forward to the next phase of the Roadmap, which we hope will include greater opportunities for input from civil society in different regions of the world."