Joint Ministerial Meeting: UN Food Systems Summit and UN High-Level Energy Dialogue

The world will need to feed some 10 billion people by 2050 while achieving the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals – a high bar given that food systems already account for over 25% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 30% of energy consumption and are vulnerable to climate change. At the same time, the world must ensure universal modern energy access for the 800 million people currently without electricity and the 3 billion without clean cooking solutions, most of whom live in agriculture-based economies.

The United Nations (UN) Food Systems Summit and the summit-level UN High-level Dialogue on Energy will be held in September 2021 in New York, two months before COP26 in Glasgow. These three milestones will be vehicles for new solutions and commitments that capture synergies across the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and decouple food and energy systems from greenhouse gas emissions.

Based on this nexus, a joint Ministerial Meeting in support of the UN Food Systems Summit and summit-level High-Level Dialogue on Energy preparatory processes will take place in partnership with the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the United Arab Emirates as part of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week and the IRENA Assembly. The Ministerial Meeting, as the first joint session of the two UN Summit processes, is intended to identify potential outcomes – such as initiatives, targets, policies, and other concrete deliverables – with simultaneous food, energy, and climate benefits that can be considered for both Summits, as well as COP26.

The ministerial leverages the IRENA Assembly’s and Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week’s stakeholder and public reach. Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week typically attracts 45,000 delegates from over 170 countries and is the world’s largest annual sustainability event. The IRENA Assembly is the largest annual meeting of energy ministers.