Canadian cattle sector shows leadership at climate focused COP27 by unveiling actions to meet ambitious goals

As COP27 wraps up, the Canadian Cattle Association (CCA) is pleased to see livestock management systems recognized for many environmental benefits and its role in helping achieve long-term climate objectives. CCA’s Bob Lowe and Mitchell Zoratti participated in COP27 as official observers and as part of Canada’s official delegation and were on the ground to participate in the many discussions.

“Beef producers experience climate-related events firsthand and we work every day to continuously improve our working landscapes for generations to come,” says Bob Lowe, CCA Past President. “As climate policy decisions are made, it is extremely valuable for producers to be present in the discussions and we were pleased to participate on behalf of Canadian beef cattle producers.”

COP27 has been coined “the COP for implementation”. By and large, discussions have had a strong focus on Climate Finance and on Loss and Damage. However, this year, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) also placed a key focus and emphasis on agriculture and food systems.

COP27 emphasized the need to look at context-specific food production systems noting in their unedited decision document titled Joint work on implementation of climate action on agriculture and food security that “high potential for adaptation, adaptation co-benefits and mitigation relate to land and food systems, such as conserving and restoring ecosystems, improving sustainability of agricultural practices and reducing food loss and waste from sustainable food systems, and have significant positive direct and indirect links with biodiversity and ecosystem services.” The document goes on to recognize “that livestock management systems are very vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and that sustainably managed livestock systems have high adaptive capacity and resilience to climate change while playing broad roles in safeguarding food and nutrition security, livelihoods, sustainability, nutrient cycling and carbon management.” Further, our sector’s targets are aligned with COP27’s climate objectives noted in the document to reduce GHG emissions while enhancing sink on pasture and grazing land.