Final week firstly of the COP28 local weather convention in Dubai, 134 nations signed a declaration pledging to cut back greenhouse fuel emissions from processes associated to producing and consuming meals.
It’s the primary time in almost three many years of local weather summits, which have been established to set the world’s course in tackling local weather change, that the significance of meals methods has been acknowledged on this means. Additionally, for the primary time, on 10 December, COP28 devoted a day to discussing methods to cut back emissions from meals and agriculture.
Many have welcomed the strikes. “It’s great to finally have food on the COP menu,” says Clement Metivier, a local weather and biodiversity coverage skilled on the World Wildlife Fund for Nature within the UK, who’s attending COP28. “There is really a growing momentum around food systems transformation to tackle both the biodiversity and climate crisis.” However equally, researchers say not sufficient is being carried out to cut back emissions in one of many world’s largest, largely untackled sources – and that can contain some robust political selections.
Making meals methods extra sustainable is essential to holding alive the dream of limiting world warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial ranges, agreed at COP21 in Paris in 2015. Getting meals from farm to food-table accounts for round a 3rd of world greenhouse fuel emissions, according to a 2021 study by Monica Crippa and Adrian Leap of the European Fee’s Joint Analysis Centre in Ispra, Italy. The researchers estimated that in 2015, some 70% of those emissions got here simply from the apply of doing agriculture and land-use adjustments – resembling reducing down bushes to clear land for crops.
There may be additionally apparent scope to cut back a few of these impacts, for instance by limiting the usage of fossil-fuel-hungry fertilizers, or by lowering meals waste. Roughly half of meals methods emissions come from meals that’s misplaced within the provide chain – earlier than reaching the patron – or wasted, according to a study published in March in Nature Food from Xunchang Fei primarily based at Nanyang Technological College in Singapore and colleagues. Halving meals loss and waste might take away round one-quarter of greenhouse fuel emissions from the meals system, the crew has estimated.
The declaration signed on 1 December means nations might want to embody meals and agriculture of their subsequent spherical of emissions discount plans – often known as Nationally Decided Contributions (NDCs) – that signify their dedication to serving to meet the Paris aim. However its preliminary affect seems more likely to be restricted.
The declaration just isn’t legally binding. It additionally fails to say the function of fossil fuels in meals methods resembling that used to move meals in addition to in powering farm equipment and refrigeration. Meals methods, furthermore, are usually not talked about within the draft textual content that every one nations should agree when COP28 ends on 11 December. “It was a glaring omission,” says Metivier, who hopes that this shall be rectified within the ultimate model.
“It’s at least a commitment at the highest level, but there’s still not much specificity in terms of what actually needs to be done,” says biodiversity and agriculture researcher Lim Li Ching on the Third World Community, a non-governmental group primarily based in Penang, Malaysia. “We need an inclusion of food systems and phasing out of fossil fuels to be built into the revision of national climate commitments,” she says.
Reducing meals carbon …
Maybe probably the most contentious facet of lowering food-related emissions is related with what we eat. Meat, dairy and different animal merchandise generate extra emissions than different meals varieties resembling fruit and greens. Halving meat consumption globally might scale back meals system emissions by almost one-quarter if the energy have been changed by different meals varieties, in line with the authors of the Nature Meals examine.
“Reducing the consumption of animal products in high-consuming countries would deliver the biggest results in the short term and should be the priority,” says meals methods researcher Helen Harwatt at Chatham Home, an international-affairs suppose tank in London. A part of this transition ought to contain financially supporting nations that closely depend on livestock for improvement, resembling India and nations in Africa, she provides. At present simply 4% of world local weather finance goes in direction of meals methods, in line with an evaluation from the Local weather Coverage Initiative suppose tank.
… just isn’t easy
However altering how folks eat on a worldwide scale is complicated. It’s firstly “political”, says Patty Fong, a programme director on the International Alliance for the Way forward for Meals, a bunch of philanthropic foundations, who can be attending COP28: complicated political selections are required to attain these targets.
Usually, governments argue that secure and nutritious meals that additionally achieves financial progress means prioritizing industrial-scale meals manufacturing. Such an strategy, nonetheless, may give much less emphasis to environmental impacts, says biodiversity and agriculture researcher Li Ching of the Third World Community.
Li Ching additionally factors out that giant firms – together with fossil gasoline firms — have good entry to governments and might due to this fact press these arguments, in contrast with small-scale farmers or Indigenous people who find themselves on the frontline of local weather impacts, however have comparatively much less affect on policymakers.
There may be additionally a dietary dimension, says Saswati Bora, an government with The Nature Conservancy, a conservation group primarily based in Arlington, Virginia, who can be attending COP28. Whereas folks in excessive earnings nations would possibly be capable to minimize down on meat consumption, that isn’t so easy in low-and-middle-income nations the place meat is a uncommon supply of protein for a lot of, however the place consumption is growing.
Highlighting this hurdle, in a 2019 examine, a bunch of 37 researchers from 16 nations— the EAT–Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health crafted a weight-reduction plan – consisting primarily of plant-based meals with a small quantity of meat or fish. But other researchers questioned whether or not the weight-reduction plan would offer sufficient vitamin for folks in low-income settings.
Such questions of world fairness are usually not the least motive why world suggestions on tips on how to scale back food-related emissions have to date not been on the menu – and might be troublesome for a lot of to swallow.
This text is reproduced with permission and was first published on December 8, 2023.
