The climate crisis is ultimately a question of what we eat, how we produce it, and who bears the cost. Solutions already exist on the ground—but scaling them depends less on technology than on aligned policies and political follow-through.
When Elisabetta Recine and thousands of delegates gathered in November 2025 for COP30, the UN's annual climate conference, they were served meals that told a story. Locally sourced, sustainably produced food was provided for the venue over two weeks—a showcase of what climate-friendly agriculture could look like.
Elisabetta Recine is president of Brazil's National Food and Nutrition Security Council (Consea), and a panel expert with the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. She was a member of the UN’s High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition/ Committee on World Food Security and is a professor of nutrition at the University of Brasília. When Elisabetta Recine speaks about food systems and climate, she brings both academic expertise and practical policy experience to the table.
The reason Recine and many others were watching COP30 closely comes down to some compelling facts. Global food systems—everything from farming to processing to transportation to waste—account for roughly one-third of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, require heavy use of fossil fuels, and drive most deforestation. Droughts, floods, and extreme weather events disrupt harvests, threaten food security, and hit the most vulnerable populations hardest. Despite this two-way relationship between food and climate, the topic has historically received limited attention in international climate negotiations. COP30 was seen by many advocates as a potential turning point, especially since it was hosted by Brazil—a country that has made significant strides in reducing hunger and promoting sustainable agriculture.
When Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had called COP30 "the COP of truth," many interpreted this as a signal that difficult conversations would finally happen in that upcoming summit. Brazil had recently lifted millions of people out of hunger through coordinated national efforts. The country had launched the G20 Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty earlier in 2025. And Belém, situated at the gateway to the Amazon was a fitting location to address the environmental impacts of industrial agriculture.
Within this lead up, Recine co-authored an opinion piece ahead of Belem arguing that Brazil had an opportunity to demonstrate leadership by connecting climate action with food system transformation. She and her co-author called for national climate plans to include transitions in agriculture that would involve both producers and workers across the food chain. There's also the complexity of the topic itself. Food systems touch on trade, agriculture, public health, labor rights, and cultural traditions. Getting countries with vastly different agricultural practices and economic interests to agree on transformation pathways is politically challenging.
Some initiatives were launched at COP30 related to agriculture, including programs focused on restoring degraded land and supporting smallholder farmers. However, Recine and others noted these often avoided highlighting how industrial food systems contributed to the problems they aimed to address. She has also pointed to a disconnect between global negotiations and local realities. As we discuss in this interview, Brazil's success in reducing hunger came through participatory governance that brought affected communities directly into policymaking. The government treated food security as a human right requiring coordinated state action across multiple sectors. The country had launched the G20 Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty earlier in November 2024.
Elisabetta Recine emphasizes that solutions exist—they're being implemented by agroecological farmers, indigenous communities, and family farmers around the world. The challenge is creating the political will to scale these approaches and align policies across climate, agriculture, trade, and public health.
Elisabetta Recineis is president of Brazil's National Food and Nutrition Security Council (Consea), and a panel expert with the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. She was a member of the UN’s High Level Panel of Experts on Food
Security and Nutrition/Committee on World Food Security (HLPE/CFS, 2017-19; 2022-2025) and is a professor of nutrition at the University of Brasília. She has also worked with Brazil's Ministries such as Social Development and Health in crafting policies that helped the country dramatically reduce hunger, and she coordinates the Observatory for Food and Nutrition Security Policies at the University of Brasilia.
Layne Hartsell, (USA) 雷恩∙哈特塞尔 - 마이클레인핫셀 - 3E: Energy, Economy, Environment – research fellow at the Center for Science, Technology, and Society, Department of Philosophy, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, and researcher in Bioregional Letters at North Valley College, Mindanao, Philippines. Past affiliations: research professor in convergence and 3E at Asia Institute, Tokyo; assistant professor, convergence studies, Sookmyung Women's University, and Research Institute for Asian Women - Asia-Pacific Women's Information Network Center in Seoul. Research professor and lecturer, Sungkyunkwan University and the Advanced Institute of Nanotechnology, Seoul/Suwon. Lecturer at Mahidol University, Siriraj Medical Center, Department of Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics, Bangkok. Researcher at the University of Virginia College of Medicine, Charlottesville. He is a member of the editorial board at Korea IT Times.
