Representative photo: Annie Spratt/Unsplash
- Traditional agricultural practices that power the global food system, including logistics and transport, have a large carbon footprint.
- As climate commitments gather momentum, we can’t afford to lessen our focus on the world’s hunger crisis either – exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, war and inflation.
- With these problems in mind, the task before COP27 participants is going to be tricky, to put it mildly.
- They should seriously consider a food-systems approach to the climate crisis, such that the world is on track to achieving both net-zero and zero hunger within this century.
- Specifically, analysing the failures and risks of the extant food system against the opportunities that local food systems provide can be a more gainful way forward.
Four of the five focus areas at the COP27 climate talks are linked to the global food system. The unified agriculture, food and land use sector – together called AFOLU – alone accounts for 21-37% of greenhouse gases emitted by human activities worldwide.
This shouldn’t be surprising: traditional agricultural practices that power the global food system, including logistics and transport, have a large carbon footprint.
But as climate commitments gather momentum, we can’t afford to lessen our focus on the world’s hunger crisis either – exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, war and inflation.
Since the pandemic began, more than 40 million people have experienced extreme hunger for the first time and food prices have surged 40%. Countries banking on imports have been set back by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In East Africa, food systems are at a breaking point and an estimated 82 million people are acutely food insecure.
Bearing these problems in mind, the task before COP27 participants is going to be tricky, to put it mildly.
In this regard, they should seriously consider a food-systems approach to the climate crisis, such that the world is on track to achieving both net-zero and zero hunger within this century.
Specifically, analysing the failures and risks of the extant food system against the opportunities that local food systems provide can be a more gainful way forward.
The global, rather globalised, food system has a hidden cost of around $11.9 trillion, versus the $10 trillion value it creates. These hidden costs include greenhouse gas emissions, obesity, food insecurity and malnutrition, and harm to rural welfare.
As the world warms, its dependence on just four crops to provide 60% of the world’s food will only become more precarious. Policymakers have also overemphasised productivity over livestock feed, and our push of genetic methods, mechanisation, and agro-chemicals have incurred considerable costs.
At the same time, AFOLU is a critical sector for climate action as well as hunger elimination. It is both source and sink for carbon emissions. However, the mitigation aspect has thus far been localised to agricultural production and the associated cropping shifts, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This strategy is based on the manipulation of genetic resources, modelling land-use and mechanisation.
In contrast, a local, landscape-based food production and foraging approach based on localised sourcing, processing and sharing can prove a sustainable, biodiverse, nutritious and just alternative.
A landscape-based system of sourcing is based on a mosaic of farmland, forests, wetlands, pastures, etc. present in a typical rural ecosystem in India. The practice of getting one’s food from these ecosystems is already embedded in the culture of the residents of many of the communities here.
Land tenure systems have evolved to categorise land under agriculture as ‘private’ while that existing as forests, pasture land and wetlands as a ‘commons’ under community ownership. Accordingly, land-owners and tenants produce food on farmland, intensively with private investment and labour. On the other hand, the locals are more equitably able to access forests, pasture land and wetlands to forage.
Next, food sourced from non-agricultural local ecosystems is biodiverse, culturally preferable and is consumed locally, accruing the least food miles[footnote]The distance food travels between the points of production and consumption, with emissions along the way.[/footnote]. They have also been effective at tackling local nutrition security, especially during natural disasters like droughts.
By exerting less stress on the wider geography with low-intensity and less extractive food production methods, this approach reduces the pressure on the planetary boundary as well.
Foods from common lands – i.e. forests, wetlands, etc. – also make up a significant part of the food basket of rural residents. Forests complement agricultural food production and provide better, more nutritionally balanced diets. Some 1.2-1.5 billion people worldwide depend on forests for their food.
In effect, forest-based foods can eliminate hunger and achieve nutritionally balanced diets, provide micronutrients and enhance dietary diversity. A 2014 study in Odisha has reported that uncultivated foods constitute approximately 37%, 29% and 45% of the food basket of tribal communities during summer, monsoon and winter, respectively. They include more than 60 varieties of fruit, 10 kinds of oil seeds, 30 kinds of mushrooms, and “20 varieties of fish, crab, insects, and birds that are consumed directly from the forest” (source).
These are important food sources for people at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid. The norms and institutions around control and access to the local food system are under decentralized community-governed access regimes, which are resilient.
Access to wild foods increases tribal households’ food diversification and makes them more resilient to climate variability. At the fringes of forested areas, tribal communities address hunger by consuming more forest and wild foods to offset agricultural crop failures.
Such a local landscape-based approach can be instrumental to reduce vulnerabilities coming from external food dependence and can curb GHG emissions. It fits very well as a nature-based solution that provides diverse, nutritious cultural food, as an alternate sovereign option. It can be a win-win option for climate action that helps meet net-zero targets while also addressing zero hunger.
However, there are limitations to this approach. Not all rural landscapes are mosaics of diverse land use that produce a variety of foods across seasons. In many countries, land under community ownership is also fast shrinking, as common land is lost for commercial enterprises.
This said, in large parts of India and the global south, a food system based on the local landscape, socio-cultural perspectives and decentralised governance as an alternative is worth discussing in COP27. It can ensure seamless local access to nutritious and diverse food for the resource-poor, with the least food miles.
This approach can be food for thought for those discussing the food system at COP27. It promises a win-win climate-food action in the form of a nature-based solution that blends the local as well as the global concerns of zero hunger and net-zero.
Pranab R. Choudhury is researcher and consultant in natural resource management and governance and founder of the Centre for Land Governance. Vishavjeet Dhanda is a geographer interested in agriculture and urban sustainability, currently working at IIM Ahmedabad.