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Turkey’s upcoming COP31 Presidency and FAO have unveiled the Turquoise Nexus Initiative.
It is aimed at integrating food security, water management and climate adaptation into national climate plans.
It will help developing countries align NDCs and Paris Agreement efforts with farmer-inclusive strategies and improved climate finance.
There is a major gap in climate policy with how food security, water management, and climate adaptation are often treated as separate challenges in national climate commitments. But ahead of its presidency of the 2026 UN Climate Change Conference (COP31), Turkey is seeking to bridge that divide with a new initiative that aims to help countries embed integrated food-water-climate approaches into their nationally determined contributions (NDC) and Paris Agreement implementation efforts.
The COP 31 Presidency and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) introduced the Turquoise Nexus Initiative (TNI), which seeks to address what organisers described as fragmentation in national climate commitments. While food, water and climate challenges are closely linked, many countries continue to approach them through separate policy frameworks, and that often limits the effectiveness of adaptation and resilience efforts.
The initiative was proposed during a side event on June 16, at the Bonn Climate Change Conference 2026 and is scheduled for a formal launch at COP 31 later this year and will aim to enable developing countries to embed integrated food-water-climate approaches into their NDCs and Paris Agreement implementation efforts.
TNI will be a proposed programme under FAO’s multistakeholder Food and Agriculture for Sustainable Transformation (FAST) Partnership which was launched by the COP27 Presidency in 2022 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
On June 9, Turkey’s Presidency of the 2026 UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) had included food security among its different priorities for COP31.
The initiative also received support from the World Farmers’ Organisation, which called for farmers to be recognised as primary managers of water resources and for climate finance to reach those working on the ground.
The member-driven international body, which represents farmers’ organisations and agricultural cooperatives worldwide, also argued for the principles underpinning TNI to be reflected in the next round of NDC submissions, and urged governments to include farmer-designed water-efficiency measures in their National Adaptation Plans.
WFO Secretary General Andrea Porro stressed that effective water governance must be built with farmers and their organisations, rather than imposed through top-down approaches.
Talking about the TNI initiative, Ahmet Bağci, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Turkey, underscored that the climate agenda cannot succeed without addressing food security and emphasised that food, water and climate were not separate issues, and that investment strategies should reflect this reality.