How to feed 10b without ruining Earth
Experts yesterday began negotiating the most comprehensive scientific assessment ever of the role the land we live off plays in climate change, expected to highlight the stark choices humanity faces to feed 10 billion people while preserving Nature.
The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) special report on land use is expected to warn how industrialised food chains, rampant resource exploitation, and even efforts to stave off the worst effects of global warming, are jeopardising our future.
But it will also deliver a withering verdict on global inequality, depicting a planet where billions of overfed people throw away vast amounts of calories at the end of each day as hundreds of millions go to bed hungry.
As delegates from around the world began poring over the report’s draft text in Geneva yesterday, experts said the importance of using land efficiently had long been overlooked.
“When you look at both the effects of the changing climate as well as contributions to climate change, the land sector is incredibly important,” Lynn Scarlett, vice president for public policy at The Nature Conservancy campaign group, told AFP.
Land use including agriculture and deforestation account for around a quarter of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. Industrial farming uses one third of all land on Earth and up to 74 percent of fresh water.
Stephen Cornelius, WWF’s chief advisor on climate change, said the world needed “an urgent transformation in how we use land in the future.
“This includes the type of farming we do, our food system and diets, and the conservation of areas such as forests and other natural ecosystems.”
With the global population set to hit 10 billion by mid-century, there are fears existing food systems will be stretched to breaking point.
Meat is a major problem, as is food waste. It’s estimated as much as 30 percent of all food produced ends up in landfills -- with a carbon footprint to match.
“Although land provides more than enough food to feed everyone, there are still 820 million who go to bed hungry every night,” said Stephan Singer, senior adviser on global energy policies with Climate Action Network, a global grouping of NGOs.
The land use report is expected to detail increasing desertification and habitat degradation from agriculture, with an area of tropical forest the size of Sri Lanka lost each year.
It will also throw up a number of trade offs.
One is striking the right balance between land used for food and land used to mitigate global warming, such as forests and bioenergy projects.
“We need to move away from harmful industrial agriculture that relies on chemicals, drives deforestation and releases emissions,” Teresa Anderson, climate policy co-ordinator at global campaign group ActionAid, told AFP.
“The writing is on the wall for big agriculture corporations.”
Food waste in numbers
One third of all food: An IPCC draft summary says between 25-30 percent of food produced for human consumption every year -- approximately 1.3 billion tonnes -- gets lost or wasted. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), food loss and waste costs the global economy close to $1 trillion each year. It also generates as much as eight percent of all manmade greenhouse gas emissions.
Inequality in wasting too: The FAO says that consumers in rich nations bin almost as much food annually (222 million tonnes) as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (230 million tonnes). People in Europe and North America each throw away an average of 95-115 kilogrammes (209-254 pounds) of food each year; people in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia throw away just 6-11 kg.
Food ‘loss’ vs ‘waste’: Whereas in developing countries 40 percent of losses occur post-harvest, in industrialised nations 40 percent of losses happen at retail and consumer levels.
1 billion obese vs 820 million hungry: Around two billion people across the world are overnourished or obese, while 820 million people go to bed hungry each night.
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