The food industry’s fingerprints were all over the solutions touted at the UN climate summit last month, campaigners and NGOs say
Nina Lakhani, The Guardian, Dec. 7, 2023
In some ways, this year’s UN climate summit held in Egypt was all about food. In the context of crop failures and food insecurity, due to extreme weather and dwindling diversity, as well as rising food prices exacerbated by Russia’s war in Ukraine and the tight grip of corporate monopolies – Cop27 included the first ever day dedicated to food and climate.
Scientists are clear that the interconnected climate, environmental and food crises require bold transformative action to drastically reduce greenhouse gases and improve resilience. Food systems produce a third of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Cattle ranching is the main driver of Amazon rainforest loss, while industrialized food production is the biggest threat to 86% of the world’s species at risk of extinction.
But at Cop27, as in the debate more broadly, corporate interests dominated. Campaigners and NGOs say the food industry’s fingerprints were all over the solutions being touted, including an array of technologies and incentives that they say will do little to cut big food’s huge climate footprint, reduce diet-related diseases or increase food security and climate resilience in the long term.
“From treating cow burps to robotic weeders, none of the false solutions on offer at Cop27 come close to stopping the industrial food production from being an engine of planetary destruction,” said Raj Patel, food justice scholar and author of Stuffed and Starved. “Agribusiness and governments offered a series of patented patches designed not to transform the food system, but to keep it the same.” …
[… Read more at The Guardian]