Just in time for COP28’s emphasis on the huge role of food systems in the climate crisis, a ‘strategy’ from South Africa’s environment ministry outlines a long-overdue plan to reduce food losses and waste, which contribute 10% of all global emissions. Critics applaud the plan’s collaborative spirit, but say it should impose tougher measures, with greater urgency.
More than one-third of all food produced in the world, and in South Africa, is never eaten. Yet 735-million people globally suffer from chronic hunger, and more than 3 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet.
Food loss and waste are not just harmful, causing 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions and 80% of deforestation, but are also inefficient, ultimately making food more expensive for consumers. Food systems as a whole cause 30% of global emissions.
Closer to home, at least one-third of South African households are food insecure, while one-third of the 31-million tonnes of food produced every year in South Africa (10 tonnes) ends up in a landfill. Wasted food incurs the costs of production, only to generate methane when it’s dumped, a greenhouse gas up to 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat.
As recently as a year ago, there was little indication that government was doing anything to encourage food donations from producers to help feed the country’s hungry millions, nor to reduce South Africa’s waste “footprint” to meet the obligations of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. (Goal 12, on sustainable consumption and production, states that countries must halve…