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The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)-a consortium of international research centers focused on sustainable agricultural development-has launched a new initiative focused on agriculture’s contribution to food security in the context of climate change: the Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change. “The food system is really not sustainable,” says Professor Sir John Beddington, U.K. Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Chair of the Commission. “What is happening is it’s getting big subsidies of fossil fuels, it is over-exploiting water, [and] it is using land in unacceptable ways.”

The Commission was established by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security (CCAFS). The Commission aims to identify and promote specific national, regional, and global policies that are needed to usher in a global food system that is based on sustainable agriculture and contributes to food security, poverty reduction, and climate change adaptation and mitigation. “The interaction between climate change, food, water, and energy security is absolutely critical. And we would make an enormous error if we actually tried to deal with one and ignore the others,” Beddington says.

The launch of the Commission comes in the wake of several high-level reports that have endorsed a shift to more sustainable approaches in agricultural development-including the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), the National Research Council’s Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century, and Agroecology and the Right to Food by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. “There is a rich body of scientific evidence for sustainable agriculture approaches that can increase production of food, fiber and fuel, help decrease poverty, and benefit the environment,” says Commission Coordinator Christine Negra. “But agreement is needed on how best to put these approaches into action at scale.”