Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, and Head of the UAE delegation to the COP26 meeting, has met with Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State…reports Asian Lite News
During the meeting, held on the sidelines of COP26 (the 26th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – UNFCCC), Glasgow, United Kingdom, Sheikh Abdullah and Blinken discussed the longstanding historic relations between the UAE and the US as well as a number of regional and global issues of mutual concern.
Sheikh Abdullah emphasised the strong and strategic UAE-US relations and the continuous cooperation development in all fields between the two sides.
Dr. Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and UAE’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, and Mariam bint Mohammed Almheiri, Minister of Climate Change and the Environment, attended the meeting.
The Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (AIM for Climate) – a major new initiative led by the UAE and US with the support of over 30 governments – officially launched on Tuesday and announced an “early harvest” of US$4 billion of increased investment to accelerate innovation for climate-smart agriculture and food systems over the next five years. The UAE has pledged US$1 billion of increased investment as part of this initiative.
Launched as part of COP26, the initiative aims to increase and accelerate agricultural and food systems innovation in support of climate action. Nearly 25 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture. AIM for Climate is focused on leveraging high-potential economic returns and job creation from innovation investment in a sector that employs over 2 billion people and feeds the world’s growing population.
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AIM for Climate’s diverse list of supporters include over 30 countries from six continents including the recent addition of Azerbaijan, Canada, and the United Kingdom, as well as numerous other non-governmental agencies.
The AIM for Climate partners intend to catalyse greater public and private sector investment in, and other support for, climate-smart agriculture and food systems innovation to help to raise global ambition and underpin more rapid and transformative climate action in all countries, including by enabling science-based and data-driven decision and policy-making. AIM for Climate partners are committing to significantly increase total investment in agricultural innovation by 2025 versus the 2020 baseline.
The initiative seeks to enable ambitious investment in climate-smart agriculture and food systems innovation to help create a surge of solutions, enabling the world to meet nutritional needs, increase agricultural productivity, improve livelihoods, conserve nature and biodiversity, build resilience to climate change, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and sequester carbon.