BELÉM, Brazil — PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP) today expressed deep concern over the latest draft text of the Sharm el-Sheikh Joint Work on Implementation of Climate Action on Agriculture and Food Security (SJWA), released on November 13, during the COP30 climate talks.
The Malaysia-based regional network observed that although the SJWA draft mentioned agroecology and its potential to promote sustainable agriculture and food systems, as well as Indigenous knowledge and the urgency of adaptation finance, these points are overshadowed by a strong emphasis on corporate-driven, techno-centric approaches that risk pushing farmers, especially small-scale producers, further into harmful agricultural models and practices.
The SJWA is the formal process under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) dealing with agriculture and food security.
PANAP Deputy Executive Director Arnold Padilla, who is attending the COP30 negotiations in Belém, northern Brazil, described the draft as “a step back for climate and food security”, noting that it promotes “innovation,” precision agriculture, artificial intelligence, and large-scale technology transfer, while disregarding farmers’ rights, data sovereignty, and the social and ecological risks associated with these technologies. “The SJWA text also endorses climate-smart agriculture, a framework widely criticized for enabling agribusiness greenwashing and reinforcing input-intensive models that worsen climate vulnerabilities rather than address them,” Padilla added.
The group said that the text’s explicit endorsement of market-based approaches and carbon markets, including Article 6 offsets, as tools to supposedly reward farmers for so-called “climate-positive outcomes,” is a major concern for advocates of climate justice, farmers’ rights, and food sovereignty.
“Carbon offset schemes in agriculture have repeatedly resulted in land dispossession, farmer indebtedness, and the diversion of public finance toward private profit-making, while failing to deliver real or lasting mitigation benefits. Embedding carbon markets in the SJWA risks institutionalizing a mechanism that prioritizes commercial interests over climate action, food security, and human rights,” said Padilla.
Moreover, the draft reinforces global trade frameworks such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), disregarding how these regimes undermine domestic food systems and restrict governments’ ability to support small-scale food producers, safeguard biodiversity, and strengthen local markets.
“Agroecology, recognized globally as a transformative pathway that advances climate resilience, biodiversity, and farmers’ rights, is mentioned only in passing. The text fails to define people-led agroecology and advance it as a core solution. Without clear language, agroecology risks being diluted or treated as interchangeable with climate-smart agriculture and other corporate-driven concepts,” Padilla said.
PANAP emphasized that a just, people-centered transition in food and agriculture will never be achieved by deepening dependence on harmful technologies and profit-oriented market mechanisms or global value chains.
“Game-changing reforms require a rights-based approach that puts farmers, Indigenous Peoples, and other small food producers at the center of climate action. As the climate crisis intensifies, governments cannot afford to adopt approaches that not only perpetuate but even reinforce the very systems driving ecological collapse, hunger, and inequality. A real solution is already in the hands of those who feed the world: communities of farmers and other small food producers practicing agroecology. It is time for the COP negotiators and the SJWA to finally recognize this before it is too late,” stressed Padilla. ###
