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.   


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pleas to Reason, Appeals for Hope

-
Image
Posted by Alexander Rezk         Hello Readers! My name is Alex Rezk, and I am a Doctoral Student in the Anthropology & Environmental Policy Program at the University of Maine, as well as a graduate student affiliate of the Climate Change Institute. I am one of four representatives of UMaine attending the first week of COP24 in Katowice, Poland. While you can find more detailed bios for all of us delegates elsewhere on this site, we thought it would be good to introduce ourselves and our framing at the COP nonetheless during these first posts!         My research is focused upon Disaster and Risk Management in the context of Climate Change,  specifically in coastal areas that experience extreme weather events and other natural disasters. Through this lens, my research is positioned such that I unpack the ways in which local and regional actors influence environmental policy. These policies have direct, real world impacts upon vul...
Read more

Presidency’s Open Dialogue: A flop?

-
Image
Post by: Anna McGinn Last year, the Fijian COP presidency established what they hoped would be a new COP tradition—the Presidency’s Open Dialogue . The idea is to bring together country representatives (parties) and non-party stakeholders (like us) for an extended session (2.5 hours in this case) to talk to each other about a central theme of the COP. Last year, I reflected on the first open dialogue in this post . To summarize what happened last year, there were 80 people seated around the “roundtable” with only 9 being from the non-country groups. The rest were country representatives. This was exciting because it meant that the countries intended to invest at least some time in engaging with us. It was a constructive first meeting, and I had high hopes for this year’s second iteration. COP23 Presidency's Open Dialogue (2017) So, what happened? To give away the punchline first, this year’s Open Dialogue did not live up to expectations. The set-up of the room was a l...
Read more

Special Report 1.5 Degrees Celsius: The Existential Tightrope of International Climate Diplomacy

-
Image
Posted by Alexander Rezk         COP is a place of many themes and many frames. People from all across the world come to discuss the most pressing issues in climate and environmental policy. At COP24, one theme in particular has been dominant: the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 Degrees Celsius as a warming-cap goal (to be referred to here on out as SR1.5). The mainstream media may be better acquainted with this report as the "...there are only 12 years left to control catastrophic climate change..." document. Either way, the effect this recently released report has had upon the global climate policy sphere is undeniable.         Yesterday, on Tuesday the 4th of December, a major Plenary meeting was held titled SBSTA-IPCC Special Event: Unpacking the New Scientific Knowledge and Key Findings in the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C. It was a massive gathering of both Official Parties (Nation State Representatives), Civil Soci...
Read more