A new proposal from the United Nations floated the idea of higher-income nations reducing their meat intake while improving access for low-income countries as an effort to fight climate change.
For the first time, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has released a global food systems road map outlining priority areas for reducing emissions in the agricultural sector. The international body suggested that richer states “can benefit from reduced consumption of animal-source foods,” while poorer nations can benefit from improved access to the food.
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While the nonbinding plan doesn’t go into depth with prescriptive policies, the U.N.’s proposal paints in broad strokes where countries should be focusing for “rebalancing” resources, such as meat consumption, food waste, and fertilizer use. The plan states that countries should aim for “fairer distribution without pitting developed against developing nations.”
“Global rebalancing isn’t about boosting production in unproductive places but shifting it to regions” in the most efficient manner or areas with “large potential,” the plan said.
However, the proposal makes clear it doesn’t stand to “dictate specific diets” but to ensure adherence to principles for healthy diets.
The proposal stands as an effort from the FAO to strike a balance between achieving zero hunger by 2030 while limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. The plan was released during the 2023 U.N. Climate Change Conference, or COP28, the largest global climate summit in Dubai.
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What distinguishes this conference from previous conferences is its focus on food — a sector that has lagged others in commitments and action for lowering emissions. Food systems, however, account for about a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The plan focused on 10 domains: livestock, enabling healthy diets, food loss and waste, soil and water, crops, forest and wetlands, clean energy, and fisheries and aquaculture. The plan laid out goals for emissions stemming from livestock, aiming to reduce them by 25% compared to 2020 levels by 2030, and for total factor productivity to grow at 1.7% per year globally. The plan also aims for countries to reduce their global food waste per capita by 50% at the retail and consumer levels, along with requiring all food loss and waste to be used for feed, soil enhancement, or bioenergy production.
