🔗Why does it matter?

🔗Why does it matter?

When change in the climate happens remotely, at a distance from us and over many years, our own behaviour may seem unrelated to events. Even when events get closer to home, maybe even affect us directly, our personal efforts may feel worthless. But each of us is one of many who are making efforts to combat the climate crisis. We just need to increase our numbers so that together we can have a very big impact both on emissions and on systemic changes.

The different sections below focus on areas with a large share of the annual greenhouse gas emissions and our contribution to those emissions. The sections also identify further impacts associated with these sectors, such as loss of forests, reduced food availability, pollution and water shortages. These impacts exacerbate the direct effects of global warming.

Each section is cross-referenced to the corresponding section containing actions and pledges in What Can I do?

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🔗Waste: why does food waste matter to the climate? ▼

Food production is responsible for about a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, and uses a large share of the land and water resources. This is often at the expense of other needs, such as preserving forests and wetlands to combat climate change. The section Why are plant-based foods better for our planet? below provides more detail.

We waste about a third of all food produced, and about 40% of that is wasted by retailers and consumers in industrialized nations.1

The amount wasted by consumers alone is almost as large as the total net food production of sub-Saharan Africa.2

So all the greenhouse gases released in producing the wasted food have been without benefit, and could have been avoided. The land and water used to grow the food could also have been used for other needs, such as saving forests to combat climate change. And we could have avoided some of the pollution of waterways.

Land and water resources are limited, so we need to maximize the food we get from a given resource, but without compromising the food quality or harming the environment. But by wasting food, we feed fewer people using those resources. So wasting food reduces the efficiency of food production, thereby placing more pressure on resources.

However, It is even more important now to increase efficiency: the population is growing, and climate impacts, such as droughts, floods and pests, are causing reduced yields and crop failures.3 These impacts are likely to worsen as we approach 1.5°C of warming. The regions worst affected tend to be those where people are already on low incomes, and so are the least able to withstand the impacts. Local food losses are already increasing hunger in drought-prone parts of Africa.4

When food is lost or wasted by us in our own country, it can affect the availability and price of food elsewhere in the world when that food is traded internationally.5 This can increase the number of undernourished people who cannot afford enough nutritious food.6 So by reducing food losses we could bring down prices, and make food more affordable worldwide.

When we, as consumers, stop wasting food, the benefits are more than just our financial gain. To pledge to take action now click So how can we reduce waste?

🔗Energy: what our electricity has to do with the climate ▼

🔗Finance: what has our money to do with the climate? ▼

🔗Why transport matters to the climate ▼

🔗Why are plant-based foods better for our planet? ▼

Why plants? Plants contribute a lower share of greenhouse gases, they release less of the more potent gas methane, and they use much less land and water compared to animal products, as we shall see. Since food production is responsible for over a quarter of global emissions, using more plant foods provides a means of slowing the rate of warming.

There are solutions but they require major transformations in both food production and our diets.

The efficiency of food production – how much food we get per unit of land and water – needs to be increased, but without harming the environment. In particular, this needs to be done without compromising our ability to combat and adapt to climate change. It’s important not to expand our use of land and water, or degrade them by harmful methods in intensive (industrial) agriculture.19

It is estimated that if animal products were excluded from our diets, the land no longer required for food production, which is about three quarters of it (77%), could remove an additional 8.1GtCO2eq of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.20 This would result from the growth of natural vegetation (forests and grasslands) and accumulating carbon stores in the soil.

As individuals we can play a huge role in lowering emissions, increasing the accessibility of food for all, reducing harmful impacts, and making more land and water available where it is needed. We can do this if we switch to a mainly plant-based diet, with few animal products.