If food waste were a country...

Cindy Isenhour 

"If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter in the world"

- Zitouni Ould Dada, Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO)

It was not too long ago that our efforts to mitigation climate change seemed to focus almost exclusively on direct energy flows (efficiency gains, energy conservation, etc) across a range of seemingly separate sectors (transport, industry, etc).  As an anthropologist deeply interested in the cultural logics that shape our understandings of and responses to environmental issues, I have observed —with great fascination —a significant shift in this thinking over the course of my career.   

Yesterday, at a UN Plenary Side Event on the Sustainable Development Goal 12 ("ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns"), panelists demonstrated a more recent mitigation logic—one that moves beyond a focus on production efficiencies and breaks down sectoral boundaries.  The panel entitled "Fighting climate change requires zero tolerance on food loss and waste" encouraged participants to think systemically about both emissions and mitigation potential. 

The emissions associated with food waste, for example, are extremely significant.  Each year approximately one third of the food we produce is lost or wasted.  Not only is this a horrible waste of human labor, economic investment, and the nutrients needed so desperately by far too many hungry people - but it is also a horrible waste of energy and thus, emissions.  It takes a lot of energy to grow, process and distribute food. Then, when food is thrown away it decomposes anaerobically in landfills -producing methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than CO2.  According to the FAO, the "total carbon footprint of food wastage, including land use change, is around 4.4 GtCO2e per year".  This is not an insignificant number given that, in order to have a "likely chance" (67%) to stay below 1.5degrees of warming, the remaining carbon budget is just 570GtCO2e (World Resources Institute).

So, while progress on climate change might -at times - seem slow, there is progress. With a more systemic view of emissions, opportunities for mitigation are also expanding… and often into realms with significant co-benefits, like reducing food waste and hunger.