Is urgent reform of world's food system still a side dish at climate talks?
Dubai, UAE – The indivisible link between climate and nutrition was a pivotal subject at Cop28 on Sunday as campaigners carried on their fight for food systems – responsible for a third of greenhouse gas emissions – to be included in the summit’s final and critical global stocktake on climate policy.
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The UN released part one of a roadmap to wipe out hunger and malnutrition while staying within 1.5°C. The document, the first of its kind, recognises that reforming the world’s entire food system is imperative to limiting temperature rises.
“Malnutrition is the human face of climate change,” Lawrence Haddad, director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, told RFI at the Dubai summit – adding that healthy diets are also essentially low-emission diets.
Food systems are such a major driver of climate change, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that failure to address the issue would be enough to jeopardise the 1.5°C target – even if fossils fuels were immediately phased out.
“Thirty percent of global greenhouse gas emissions come directly from food – and that’s everything from the way we produce food, transport food and consume food,” said Brent Loken, the World Wildlife Fund's global food lead scientist.
Diversifying that system is key – and it needs to happen fast.
“We’ve got 14,000 edible and nutritious plant species, yet 75 percent of the food that we eat comes from only 12 plant and five animal species,” Loken added.
FAO roadmap
The UN roadmap, by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), agrees that diets “absolutely” need to change for the sake of human and planetary health. Working out how to make that happen is the challenge.
However some NGOs at Cop28 worry the plan will deprioritise local livelihoods while giving power to big agriculture as in the bid to work out a global approach to transforming food systems and slashing hefty livestock emissions.
The absence of sustainable farming approaches – considered a key area to combat climate change – was of particular concern.
While there’s a low-carbon transition underway in the energy and transport sectors, no similar transition is happening in the food sector – despite its greenhouse footprint and despite its impact on human health.
To address this, food and agriculture firms have sent three times as many delegates to Cop28 compared to last year’s event in Egypt.
While more than 150 countries were quick to sign the UAE Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action, hardly any have fought for the inclusion of food in the summit’s flagship GST global stocktake.
“What gets into the final text signals to countries what is important,” Loken told RFI. “And if it's not’s there that’s a signal that we need to come together as a global food systems community and figure out how to reach the negotiators.”
Malnutrition crisis
Food production is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate, with as much as a third of global food potentially at risk.
Research shows that when staple crops such as wheat, corn, rice and soy are exposed to CO² at the levels predicted for 2050, they lose essential nutrients such as zinc, iron and protein.
This represent major risks to people’s health in poorer nations where nutrient deficiencies are already the drivers of disease.
Since 2019, an extra 122 million people have been pushed into hunger because of climate change. A projected 600 million more face chronic hunger by 2030. Meanwhile 45 percent of deaths of children aged under five have been linked to malnutrition.
“The combination of malnutrition and disease is particularly evident in flood-ravaged areas such as Pakistan and Somalia where dirty water helps spread illnesses such as cholera,” warned Afshan Khan, who leads the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement, a project involving 65 nations committed to ending malnutrition by 2030.
“A child’s body becomes much more susceptible to disease if that child is malnourished.
Khan, the highest-ranking nutrition official in the United Nations system, told RFI that improved access to finance was vital to mitigate the impacts of climate – especially for people who are forced from their homes.
Organisers say more than $3 billion in climate finance has been pledged for food and agriculture since the start of the summit – but getting that money where it needs to go is a separate challenge.
“Currently the disbursement of the funds is slower than it needs to be … and very difficult to access … particularly for countries that don’t have strong infrastructure, like Somalia,” Khan said.
She would like to see increased focus on the humanitarian cost of climate.
“We have to understand that these climate disasters impact those who are most vulnerable … households who do not have protective measures.”
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