FFood-insecure communities whose lives and livelihoods (often subsistence farming) are threatened by global heating need access to early-warning information, financial protection before disasters hit, climate insurance for crops and livestock, as well as shock-responsive social protection systems. (Photos: Lucas Ledwaba / Mukurukuru Media // Adobe Stock) 
In the past week, the United Nations has issued warnings that the world faces a “hellish” 3℃ of climate heating this century — because current carbon-cutting policies (and actions) are inadequate to limit heating to 1.5℃ above pre-industrial temperatures, a limit a majority of countries pledged to under 2016’s Paris Agreement.
Globally, we are already at 1.4℃.
The report predicting the 3℃ catastrophe is from the United Nations Environment Program (Unep), and it found that today’s carbon-cutting policies are so inadequate, The Guardian reported, that the world would reach 3℃ of heating this century. Unep also said that even acting on policies already made for future implementation would mean a skimpy reduction of only 0.1℃ off the 3℃ limit.
Read more in the Daily Maverick: What South Africa will tell the world at COP28
The report says that for the world to get on track to the 1.5℃ target, 42% of total global emissions projected for 2030 (22-billion tons of CO2), must be cut. That is the equivalent of the combined emissions of China, the United States, India, Japan, and Russia — the world’s five greatest polluters.
Where does food come into it?
Food and agriculture are responsible for one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet food has only made it onto the annual climate COP’s agenda once in its 27 years so far — in 2022, when it featured as a sideshow to the main event. Food waste alone is responsible for close to 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions, mostly from the methane produced by livestock.
This year, finally, food is in its proper place: On the main programme, and many times over. There are 16 food, agri- and aqua-culture meetings on the official schedule, and many more food-related side events.
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-11-27-five-things-to-watch-out-for-at-cops-biggest-gathering-yet-this-time-in-dubai/
We have just got past the tipping point, it would seem, in the world’s late-breaking recognition that food — what we grow, how we produce food products, how we eat (and how much we waste) — is central to humanity’s future, not just because we all need food every day, but because of food systems’ impact on just about all aspects of the world we live in: on soil health and biodiversity, availability of freshwater, on overall environmental degradation, and on the small-scale farmers who produce up to 80% of the world’s food but receive less than 1.7% of climate-related finance.
What’s on the agenda for food at COP28?
While COP27 was preoccupied with “loss and damage” compensation for countries already hard-hit by the climate crisis, food-systems observers are expecting a ramped-up interest in, and louder voices on, food-related impacts, with ‘Food Systems’ one of Devex’s top 7 “issues to watch” for COP28. The others are Loss and Damage [again/still]; Climate Finance; Just Energy Transition Partnerships [of which South Africa’s $8.5-billion deal announced at COP26 was the first]; Early Warnings; Global Stocktake; and the Global Goal on Adaptation.
Experts and high-level figures in the world of food are calling for greater climate-related actions and investment to protect the world’s poorest and most fragile countries and communities specifically from the food- and farming-related impacts of climate change. Last year alone, those impacts in the form of intensified droughts, floods and heat waves pushed 56.8 million people into ‘acute’ food insecurity, the World Food Programme (WFP) says.
Apart from the obviously urgent and critical issue of acute food insecurity globally and in South Africa, (notwithstanding that 30% of all food produced is ‘lost’ or wasted), some anticipated focus topics will be the Food and Agriculture Organization’s ‘road map’ to reducing emissions from food and agriculture systems with the aim of limiting global heating to 1.5℃, and refining a four-year plan on global agriculture and food security.
That plan, the successor to the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture from COP23 in 2018, which recognised “the vital role of the food security and agricultural sectors in climate change adaptation and mitigation”, was formulated at COP27 — but many advocates were left unhappy with it because their proposal to expand the plan’s scope of from agriculture to food systems more broadly was not agreed to.
Read more in Daily Maverick: COP27 ‘failed to reflect the urgency of the global climate crisis’
At COP27, food systems advocates and experts called for Koronivia’s new mandate to take “a particular focus on sustainable food production, nutrition and dietary shifts, as well as food loss and waste”. However, the final agreement reduced references to food-systems approaches and “was stripped of critical interventions such as nutrition and dietary shifts,” Devex reported, among others.
‘Climate crisis doesn’t have to be a hunger crisis’
WFP Executive Director Cindy McCain said, one week before WFP’s expected call to action at COP28’s start, “The climate crisis doesn’t have to be a hunger crisis, but that’s exactly what’s happening.” McCain explained that food-insecure communities whose lives and livelihoods (often subsistence farming) are threatened by global heating need access to early-warning information, financial protection before disasters hit, climate insurance for crops and livestock, as well as shock-responsive social protection systems.
By strengthening local systems and investing in communities and countries most at risk, it is possible, WFP says, to protect local food systems from the worst impacts of climate extremes and prolonged food insecurity. At the moment, they say, the humanitarian system (of which WFP is a part, as a form of emergency assistance) “is struggling to keep up with the pace of escalating crises, pushing more and more people into hunger and weakening already strained food systems”.
Examples close to home of the kinds of funding and actions WFP is advocating for are their $12.8-million funding to Lesotho, Madagascar, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, in September, to finance early-warning messages, drought-tolerant seeds, anticipatory cash payments before an extreme weather event, and safe water for communities and livestock. This will protect more than 550,000 people from impending drought impact.
Methane emissions: a hot topic
At the top of the list of food-related contributors to the climate crisis is methane, the gas produced by livestock that is 10 times more potent than carbon as a greenhouse gas. Global methane emissions from the 70-billion animals farmed worldwide every year contribute at least 16.5% (possibly up to 28%) to all GHGs (much more than all forms of transport).
At COP27, 150 countries signed a global agreement to reduce their methane emissions. Let’s see if countries reducing their meat consumption finally get a seat at COP28’s main table. DM
Adèle Sulcas is a global health policy writer and an editorial adviser for Maverick Citizen’s Food Justice Project and Wits University’s Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science.