Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) nexus with Agriculture under Climate Change

The proposed Workshop is supported by the FCDO Gulf Strategic Fund, project Gulf Sustainable Agri-tech Discovery (GSAD) and ICBA, led by Rothamsted Research. The GSAD provides 3 years of support to broker UK and UAE research linkages in Agri-tech addressing ‘Agriculture under Climate Change’. Additional funds are also provided under UKRI BBSRC support to Rothamsted Research.

Overview

Industry and government now unequivocally realise the need to imbed environmental sustainability, particularly climate change, at the heart of their policy and commercial operational base, respectively. Whist this takes many forms, given the breadth of policy and commercial aims, ESG is widely used to convey the direction of travel. Agriculture and food occupy a significant position in the debate on global sustainability. Directly in terms of agricultural productivity, and indirectly in context of a dependency and impact on the environment. Moreover, non-agricultural industries are increasingly looking to offset their environmental footprint by investing in economies of Natural Capital, such as carbon or biodiversity, by means that impact on agriculture and the environment. The imperative of global environmental sustainability, that mitigates and adapts to climate change, requires significant research, centred on a perspective of 10 to 30+ years. To secure our future, we need to increasingly invest in a next generation of researchers and research infrastructure.

In the run-up to COP28, the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) in collaboration with Rothamsted Research, the UK, are organizing a 2-day Workshop on “Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) nexus with Agriculture under climate change” on the 13th and 14th of March 2023, at ICBA’s headquarters in Dubai, UAE.
The workshop will bring together various stakeholders from government, research, academia, and industry to form a consensus on the need for applied and fundamental research to develop solutions for sustainable agriculture in the face of climate change. In this context, the workshop will explore the nexus between environment, social and governance (ESG) and agriculture under climate change. This nexus can serve as a platform for agriculture-related climate change research.

The two-day workshop agenda will explore the following questions:

1. Why ESG matters in the lead-up to COP28?
2. Why should corporates care about environmental sustainability? How are they addressing it through ESG?
3. How agri-tech research is addressing “Agriculture under climate change” and measuring sustainability? The discussion will include examples from soil, water, crop health, plant breeding, sustainable protein, and value chains.
4. Theory of Change: Embracing ESG to realise scale, structure, and a long-term commitment for agriculture research for innovation to address the challenges of “Agriculture under Climate Change”.