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COP27 is serving up a sense of renewed hope

At the Food4Climate Pavilion at COP27 it is very much #ACopHalfFull as food system experts say they are confident that real change is now happening that will deliver a better future for people and planet.

I caught up with an old friend of the Inside Ideas podcast, author Felix Dodds, Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina and an Associate Fellow at the Tellus Institute, outside the Food4Climate Pavilion, to find out if it is a #ACopHalfFull for him.

“It is half full,” he said. “There is a lot of optimism. The Glasgow COP was able to start a number of processes that were perhaps not in the negotiations: the coalitions of the willing. That is where we are going to see some of the advancements. There was one on finance, one on methane, and one on forests. And I think that if we can build around those and they start to deliver, then the temperature target that we are going for of 1.5 °C is more deliverable.”

His latest book, which he co-authored with Chris Spence, Heroes of Environmental Diplomacy: Profiles in Courage, was published this summer and I look forward to Felix coming back on Inside Ideas to tell us more about that soon.

I also spoke with Raphaël Podselver, head of UN Advocacy at proveg international, outside the Food4Climate Pavilion and asked if it was #ACopHalfFull for him.

“If you had asked me that questions two or three years ago I would maybe have struggled a bit but I think we are seeing a lot of change here at this COP in Sharm el-Sheikh. We are seeing a lot of different food pavilions, which we didn’t have in the past. Which means delegates, at a national level, at the UN level, civil societies, farmers – everybody can connect, can come to the table, can discuss,” Podselver said. “There is a big change. We see world leaders mentioning agriculture and food systems and I am pretty optimistic that this is the start of real and coherent policies around food system shifts. Which should takes us in a direction where global north countries are less dependent on animal sourced proteins and consume a higher percentage of plant sourced proteins.”

Follow #ACopHalfFull on twitter and share your vision and ideas for a better future.

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Written By

Marc is Editor-at-Large for Innovators Magazine and host of INSIDE IDEAS, his OnePoint5Media video podcast show. Marc is a member of the World Economic Forum Expert Network, Resilient Futurist, and award-winning Global Food Reformist.

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