At a side event held during the 2026 Bonn Climate Change Conference, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and Türkiye’s Presidency of the 2026 UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP 31) presented an initiative to create a global mechanism to integrate food systems transformation, sustainable water management, and climate adaptation.

An initiative of Türkiye to be formally launched at COP 31, the Turquoise Nexus Initiative (TNI) aims to address fragmentation in the way national climate commitments reflect water, agriculture, food security, and adaptation measures.

According to the Earth Negotiation Bulletin (ENB) summary of the event, TNI is a proposed programme of FAO’s Food and Agriculture for Sustainable Transformation (FAST) Partnership that will “bring together governments, international organizations, research institutions, civil society, and the private sector around a common agenda for climate-resilient, water-centered agriculture and food systems.” It will aim to support developing countries in integrating food-water-climate approaches into their nationally determined contributions (NCDs) and implementation efforts under the Paris Agreement on climate change.

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Addressing event participants, Kaveh Zahedi, Assistant Director General and Director of the FAO’s Office of Climate Change, Biodiversity, and Environment, noted growing momentum to address climate change through agriculture and food systems. Describing the FAST Partnership as “a COP-to-COP mechanism that aims to ensure agriculture, food security, and climate finance remain high priorities on the international climate agenda,” he said it also seeks to “increase the quantity and quality of climate finance to support the transformation of agriculture and food systems.”

Fatma Varank, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change, Türkiye, outlined the COP 31 Presidency’s vision and priorities, stressing the importance of implementation.

Ahmet Bağci, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Türkiye, said “the climate agenda cannot succeed without addressing food security.” Announcing that Türkiye aims to create a project pipeline to transform goals into practical solutions, he underscored that food, water, and climate are interlinked, and “investment strategies should reflect this reality.”

Umay Gökçe Özkan, Coordinator for International Technical Organizations, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Türkiye, said TNI is designed to address fragmentation through policy coherence, implementation support, knowledge generation, technical exchange, investment readiness, and finance alignment.

Martial Bernoux, Senior Natural Resources Officer, Office of Climate Change, Biodiversity, and Environment, FAO, said the FAST Partnership supports concrete actions at the nexus of climate, finance, and agrifood systems by seeking to address the systemic challenges to ensuring adequate and predictable climate finance flows to agrifood systems, including access, knowledge and capacity, and policy support and dialogue. 

In closing, Bağcı reiterated that TNI will facilitate knowledge exchange and technical cooperation by serving as a practical platform to help countries “connect policies and translate them into implementation.”

The side event took place in Bonn, Germany, on 16 June 2026. [ENB Summary of Turquoise Nexus Initiative Side Event]