The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has for the first time published a roadmap to regulate global food systems within 1.5°C limits and end hunger. Among the United Nations recommendations to align the agri-food industry with the Paris climate agreement are priorities to curb excessive meat consumption and food waste, eliminate deforestation and capture carbon in the soil.
The reform of food systems is, as confirmed by the UN this Sunday, a key fact to limit the increase in global temperature. To achieve this, the FAO roadmap starts with establishing food production that reduces greenhouse gases globally and maintains global temperatures within 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
“FAO’s global roadmap for SDG 2 and 1.5°C underlines the importance of climate finance for the transformation of agri-food systems to achieve good nutrition for all, today and tomorrow,” he said. FAO Director-General QU Dongyu said in a statement.
The objectives of this roadmap include reducing methane emissions from livestock by 25% by 2030, sustainably managing fisheries by 2030 and safe and affordable drinking water by 2030. The document also highlights reducing halve food waste by 2030 and eliminate the use of traditional biomass for cooking by 2030.
To carry out this roadmap, as FAO explains in the same statement, alternative production methods, adjusted consumption patterns, refined forest management and innovative technologies such as carbon capture are needed.
“This roadmap places enormous emphasis on incremental improvements to the current industrial food system, but it is unlikely that these proposals that prioritize efficiency will be enough to get us off the high pollution path we are on,” details Emile Frison, an expert at the IPES-Food panel. Frison adds that the next stages of this process will have to propose a real transformation of the status quo: “it will need to put much more emphasis on diversification, shorter supply chains and agroecology, and on addressing the huge power inequalities imposed by a handful of companies that define what we grow and eat,” he highlights.
From farm to fork, food systems account for approximately one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Although non-binding, the FAO plan is expected to inform policy and investment decisions and give a boost to the climate transition of the food industry, which has lagged behind other sectors in commitments, financing and measurements.
The Rome-based FAO, charged with improving the agricultural sector and nutrition, seeks to strike a balance between achieving the goal of zero hunger by 2030 while avoiding crossing the 1.5°C global warming threshold. .
