On March 8 and 9 2018, Oxford Climate Policy facilitated a Seminar for agriculture negotiators as part of the Koronivia Dialogue hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN in Rome, Italy.  The Seminar built on seminars  for agriculture negotiators hosted by OCP/ecbi that took place in Bad Godesberg, Germany, and Oxford, UK, in September and May 2017.

The aim of the Rome seminar was to take stock and discuss next steps after the adoption of the Koronivia Joint Work (KJW) on matters relating to agriculture under the UNFCCC Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA). It was attended by 54 negotiators from 43 countries, as well as the SBI and SBSTA chairs and the Climate Champion of the incoming Polish COP Presidency.

Guided by a set of questions proposed by some of the participants, the Seminar started by inviting participants to share their views on the submissions on the views of Parties on elements to be included in the KJW. This was followed by a substantive discussion on what exactly the KJW could and should do with the six topical areas listed in paragraph 2 of the KJW Decision. It soon became clear that a significant number of participants were keen to proceed to some form of implementation, but it was equally clear that the six items listed in the said paragraph are not really implementable. In particular, apart from one, none of them contain action points – without which there is nothing to be implemented. A number of participants suggested that the Party submissions should focus on suggesting such activities to enable the KJW to identify implementable actions at its inaugural session at SB 48 (in May 2018 in Bonn, Germany).

The third and final set of questions related to what should happen at SB 48. The first of the KJW work areas listed in paragraph 2, [(a) modalities for implementation of the outcomes of the five in-session workshops on issues related to agriculture], does contain an action point. The reports of two of the in-session workshops referred to suggest "developing a web platform for exchanging information on, inter alia, experiences gained guidelines, decision support tools and models, databases and lessons learned".  It thus stands to reason that this could be a start up activity for the KJW, for which implementation could be launched by adopting an implementation road map at SB 48.