Locations
Forest Positive Agriculture
Over 90% of deforestation in the last two decades is due to agricultural expansion, and in tropical countries, land-use conversion to agriculture and pastureland accounts for approximately 73% of deforestation. Beef, soy, palm oil, cocoa, timber, paper/pulp and coffee production drive 40% of this deforestation. This results in increased pressure on the environment to meet the demand for and production of commercial agricultural commodities.
UNDP FACS seeks to eliminate deforestation and land conversion from key food and agricultural commodities systems, while improving livelihoods and resilience for women, small producers and indigenous people.
Corrective actions to address the impact of global food production and trade on forests and climate change is now evolving from deforestation-free supply chains to forest positive strategies, highlighting the opportunities of sustainable production while tackling potential bottlenecks in supply chains.
Our work areas
A systemic approach to sustainability: improving land use and saving emissions
The commercial production of food commodities is a dominant economic force in many developing rural economies. Worldwide, the livelihood of 2.5 billion people depends on agriculture. Yet, a growing global population, rising incomes and changing diets will continue to increase food demand and put more pressure on the planet’s finite natural resources. Soy, beef and palm oil alone contribute to nearly 70% of global tropical deforestation. The consequences include losses to habitats and biodiversity, rising carbon dioxide levels which contribute to climate change, as well as the degradation of essential ecosystem services such as clean water and fresh air which we depend on for our very survival.
We must act swiftly to forge new ways of doing business that enable 'good growth' without the associated environmental consequences of unsustainable agricultural production and deforestation. With the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 deadline looming in front of us, we need more than ever a systemic shift in agricultural commodity supply chains. Moving away from siloed and small-scale approaches is crucial: focusing on a single country, sector, or scale of action, cannot deliver transformative change.
Enabling a full integration of supply chains
Working with a full range of stakeholders, from small-scale producers to national governments and global corporations, UNDP FACS, through the Good Growth Partnership (GGP), promotes a systemic approach to sustainability that encompasses entire commodity supply chains. Instead of treating production, demand and finance interventions as separate tracks, the Partnership looks at where the layers of the supply chain integrate and overlap to enhance financial incentives and demand for sustainably produced agricultural commodities.
Engaging all actors to reduce deforestation
Working simultaneously on production, demand, and finance, in Brazil, Paraguay, Indonesia and Liberia, the UNDP FACS-led GGP has been working since 2017 to advance sustainable development in three key global commodity supply chains: soy, beef, and palm oil. The Partnership helped to bring over 28 million hectares of land under improved natural resource management and practices, avoiding over 58 million metric tonnes of Co2 emissions (lifetime direct). GGP has also built the financial backbone of sustainable production and land restoration, by training finance institutions in how to look for, identify, and manage forest risks in investment decisions, and supporting the development of financial tools, products, and regulations. Finally, GGP raised awareness and demand for sustainable products, while engaging the private sector at every point in the supply chain: this work led to over 80 companies launching new commitments to source reduced deforestation commodities.
You can read more here.
UNDP Effective Collaborative Action approach to shape a new vision of food systems
Achieving forest positive outcomes in agricultural commodities systems means facing complex and challenging problems lacking a clear answer. Regardless of their ambition or wealth, they cannot be solved by a single person, institution, or incentives, such as policies, market led or financial mechanisms. Our biggest potential for change lies in aligning stakeholders directly in producing countries with differing interests, power, and voices within a shared vision.
As the UN agency for development, UNDP’s role spans across development issues, catalysing cross-sectoral policy dialogue at national and subnational level, and breaking silos to tackle the key components of the sustainability challenge required for systemic change.
Convening all stakeholders
UNDP FACS promotes multi-stakeholder, commodity-focused dialogues spaces at national, sub-national and landscape-levels, promoting trusting relationships and a common vision amongst initially often divergent stakeholders’ interests.
UNDP is a thought and practice leader in processes and techniques of building shared vision and collective action through dialogue. We catalyse broad partnerships to pool together relevant know-how, ensure capacity building, as well as synergies and emulation across key actors. This includes South-South cooperation (horizontal dialogue), and public-private partnerships.
These spaces are used to support complex policy decision making and setting processes, as well as their implementation and enforcement or monitoring, such as:
- Setting national or subnational visions, strategies and action plans for forest positive agriculture;
- Aligning public and private sectors resources towards the above visions, strategies and actions plans;
- Reforming policies for promoting sustainable production;
- Strengthening farmer support system to allow producers to adopt more sustainable production practices that do not lead to forest degradation or destruction;
- Improving land use planning and land use change monitoring systems, so that production takes place away from High Conservation Value and High Carbon Stock areas;
Driving the way forward in new systems thinking leadership, UNDP FACS developed the cutting-edge approach for "Effective Collaborative Action", laying out ten principles to navigate the complexities of multi-stakeholder collaboration with an inclusive approach.
A global portfolio
Contributing with its innovative approach through a portfolio of over $4 billion, UNDP FACS has supported the establishment or strengthening of national and sub-national multi-stakeholder and commodity-focused platforms in more than ten countries (including Brazil, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Liberia, Peru and Paraguay). The focus is on bringing together actors from public and private sectors and civil society in target commodities and landscapes, with the view to aligning on a vision and action for sustainable commodities production.
These efforts resulted in a series of collaborative action plans targeting the root causes of resistance to change. Several plans are currently under progress with unlocked public and private financing and investment. In particular, the UNDP FACS-led GGP pilot phase (2017-2022)’s work in Indonesia, Liberia and Paraguay has:
- supported an improved enabling environment for sustainable land use by developing or improving 19 land use policies, eight of which are in-force;
- fostered sustainable production through the development or improvement of nine policies. Four of these have been legalized and are moving into implementation, showing early impact;
- strengthened producer support systems by enabling national and subnational governments to develop strategies that build-on and scale-up the results of training and private sector engagement.
Supporting system-level changes through a strong framework
Action to shift food and agricultural commodities towards being forest positive occurs at multiple levels and is led by a variety of political, private and civil-society organizations. With a myriad of actors, programmes and standards operating at different levels and geographical scales, isolated players may lack authority to undertake legal or policy reforms. Competing programmes may overlap, contradict or undermine one another. Siloed initiatives may struggle to access best practices or mobilize capacity, expertise or political support.
Supporting greater alignment to boost impact
Acting in such fragmented reality, we need a strong framework to understand and streamline the actions of all key actors. Through decades of experience, UNDP FACS has developed a deep understanding of how achieving system-level change requires these diverse stakeholders to align, collaborate, and collectively learn, innovate, and act in a changing environment. With greater alignment, the impact of practitioner efforts at all levels of the system can be amplified and scaled. By addressing root causes that hinder change rather than symptoms at a more superficial level, we can gear up for transformative change.
UNDP works to strengthen at national level the connection between national commitments to global conventions, specifically linking national food system pathways through NDCs and National Biodiversity Strategies Action Plans (NBSAPs). Thanks to UNDP’s systemic approach connecting the ‘whole-of-government’ driving policy changes, the focus is to ensure that food systems work is central in National Action plans, while having the NDCs and NBSAPs positively influencing food systems’ work.
Acting as a neutral broker
UNDP FACS has developed the Four Dimensional Systemic Change report, presenting a framework to enhance vertical (across scales) and horizontal (between local actors) cooperation, as well as increasing government capacity for synergetic alignment and better aligning resources and incentives. In Indonesia, UNDP FACS, with funding from the Switzerland State Secretariat of Economic Affairs (SECO), has supported the launch and current implementation of the National Action Plan for Sustainable Palm Oil (NAP SPO) since 2014.
Integrating national, provincial and district level solutions, UNDP acted as neutral broker to support the government-led multi-stakeholder action plans. UNDP’s work proved instrumental to set up and implement sub-national action plans in four provinces (Jambi, North Sumatera, Riau and West Kalimantan) and four districts (Tebo, Pelalawan, South Tapanuli and Sintang), while continuing to provide assistance for coordination at national and sub-national level to advance sustainable palm oil efforts in the country.
