In their wide-ranging “stocktake” at the UN climate summit, world leaders urged the adoption of sustainable agriculture and resilient food systems on Wednesday without setting goals for the sector that produces one-third of global greenhouse gases. “We have to cross our fingers and hope that governments deliver on promises to put food in new national climate plans,” said Wanjira Mathai of the World Resources Institute.

Summit leaders celebrated the two-week conference in Dubai as the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era with an agreement to transition away from coal, oil, and gas. Contributions from the food and agriculture sector would be voluntary.

The 21-page global stocktake, containing elements that countries can use in developing stronger climate plans, encouraged “the implementation of integrated, multi-sectoral solutions, such as land-use management, sustainable agriculture, resilient food systems, nature-based solutions and ecosystem-based approaches, and protecting, conserving, and restoring nature and ecosystems, including forests, mountains, and other terrestrial and marine and coastal ecosystems.”

It also urged swift action on “attaining climate-resilient food and agricultural production and supply and distribution of food, as well as increasing sustainable and regenerative production and equitable access to adequate food and nutrition for all.”

Some 154 nations, including the world’s agricultural powerhouses, signed the so-called Emirates Declaration in the first days of COP28, with its statement that “any path to fully achieving the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement must include agriculture and food systems. We affirm that agriculture and food systems must urgently adapt and transform in order to respond to the imperatives of climate change.”

“This declaration, I think, is a pretty significant milestone,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack earlier this week, because it spells out how food and agriculture can mitigate and adapt to global warming. The declaration has goals such as scaling up adaptation activities and other responses in order to reduce the vulnerability of farmers, “fisherfolk,” and other food producers to climate change.

The declaration will oblige nations to put food and agriculture into their climate plans, said Ruth Davis of the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment in England. “The forgotten third of global greenhouse gas emissions will be under proper scrutiny, providing there is funding on the table. What we really need now is to deliver on the money.”

Also at COP28, six major food makers said they would reduce their dairy methane emissions. Dairy generates nearly 10 percent of the world’s emissions of methane, which is far more potent in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, though it decays in around 12 years while carbon dioxide persists for centuries.

Agriculture and food is a prickly subject for almost any international undertaking, since every nation has a food sector, often with political clout, and assuring a dependable food supply for its citizens is a priority for nations. World trade negotiations, for example, have deadlocked for years over agricultural supports.