The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) have launched the Climate Action Platform on Agriculture (PLACA). The Platform aims to support joint solutions in the agriculture sector in the LAC region, including climate adaptation and mitigation practices, and promoting the joint formulation of more ambitious goals for reflection in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement on climate change.The initiative, led by the Government of Chile, was launched on 5 December 2019, at the UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP 25) in Madrid, Spain.
PLACA is a voluntary membership platform. To date, the Governments of Argentina, the Bahamas, Brazil, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay have signed on.
During the launch, ECLAC Executive Secretary Alicia Bárcena said that in the arena of agriculture, climate action means nature-based solutions, bioeconomy, linking with the biodiversity and desertification agendas, and science-policy dialogue. The region faces significant agriculture-related challenges that make it particularly vulnerable to climate change, namely: achieving food security for its population and ensuring large-scale food production for other regions of the world.
The next steps in the Platform’s implementation include detailed socialization with all countries in the region, capacity-building processes, and the development of monitoring and evaluation tools and mechanisms.
The process of building the platform began in 2012 with ECLAC and FAO support to the climate negotiations in the forestry and agriculture sectors. [Webcast of Launch Event] [Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) News Story] [NRDC Blog Post]