Climate and Nutrition: Ready to Connect for Impact

Or how food systems change has to be an integral part of climate action

Op-Ed co-penned by Lawrence Haddad, Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) and Afshan Khan , Coordinator of the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement, and first published on Medium

We’re going to miss the 1.5°C target. That’s now clear. Look at the latest IPCC reports. Or just open the door: you know the world is warmer. Yet one area that has been totally ignored in the climate debate is food systems. They have been kept locked up in their own separate silo, away from any discussion about climate action.

Look at the facts. Food systems are both the cause and victim of the climate crisis. They generate a third of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and are very vulnerable to the changes we’re all seeing. On top of that, food systems put a human face to climate change: the direct result of disruptions driven by climate change is malnutrition.

Climate change makes food production a riskier business, lowers the nutrient density of cereals and spoils food, loading it up with bacteria like e coli making it unsafe to eat. When kids don’t have enough food, or enough of the right type of food, malnutrition rears its ugly head. Many children die. And those who survive do not fulfil their potential. Because of malnutrition, 1 in 5 children worldwide are stunted in brain development and immune system development. Economies are stunted, just like their children. This is happening now.

For us and our peers, it is also clear that nutrition action is not scaling up fast enough. Child stunting and wasting reduction has slowed, and rates of anaemia in women are stuck. On the other side of the malnutrition coin, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and obesity levels are exploding all over the world.

Where are the nutrition experts working to create opportunity out of the required climate action, by adapting food systems? And where are the climate experts, finding new ways to mitigate the impact of climate change on food systems? For example, where markets are not well developed the prices of nutritious foods like vegetables, pulses and eggs vary wildly from season to season — affecting child development — , but too few nutritionists are working with the climate experts to mitigate seasonality.

Climate and nutrition need each other.

Two major climate and nutrition moments are upon us: COP28 in the UAE and the following year , the Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Summit in France. Together, they present opportunities to advance these agendas together by investing in them in an integrated way, accelerating each faster than would be the case if we continue to let the silos go unchallenged. There is a fundamental truth in the cliché that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

What kinds of investments are we talking about?

Healthier diets in the global north mean lower GHG emissions, simply because the global north consumes too many animal source foods, way above what the national food based dietary guidelines recommend. We need to change the way consumers, policymakers and business leaders think about diets rich in foods such as fruits, vegetables, beans, fish and chicken. They are not a luxury: they are a necessity. But they are currently unaffordable to three billion people. If we can find ways to change that, we’d be helping advance better nutrition outcomes and it would be good for the planet.

We also need a tight focus on reducing food loss and waste (FLFW) of nutritious foods. This is difficult because nutritious foods tend to be fresh foods and therefore very susceptible to spoilage. Reducing FLFW for nutritious foods is good for nutrition and reduces zombie emissions — emissions that serve no nutrition purpose but are damaging nonetheless to the planet.

Government purchases of food for schools that focus on nutrition AND emissions can advance both goals. Currently purchases are based on hunger reduction, not nutrition or climate. This needs to change. As the biggest food consumer of all, governments need to set the incentives and regulations for the private sector to follow.

Greater priority to promoting breastmilk consumption for infants is essential. Breastfeeding gives children the best nutritional start in life and reduces GHG emissions from the lower production, packaging and distribution of breastmilk substitutes.

Investments to improve animal welfare will make a big difference. Many people in the developing world depend on animals for their livelihoods. Yet too many of these animals die due to poor conditions. This means household assets are depleted, the animals suffer, and the nutrients they could contribute are lost, while the GHGs they emit have served no purpose.

In all of these climate-nutrition actions, we need to be very aware of the multiple challenges women face. They are more exposed to climate hazards due to their key role in food production and water collection. This exposure places more demands on their time and workload which affects their ability to provide for their households food security and young child nutrition. This in turn has far reaching consequences on intergenerational nutrition.

Are there opportunities to introduce these kinds of double whammy investments in climate and nutrition action? Yes. The recently ICAN baseline report led by GAIN, partnering with SUN, FAO, and WHO, shows exactly where the opportunities lie.

The Report, released at the Committee on Food Security meetings in late October, reviewed tens of thousands of policies, strategies and investments across over 100 countries, agencies and businesses. Examples of opportunities abound.

On the climate side, the Report found that:

• Only 2% of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) — country emission reduction roadmaps — have concrete plans to address nutrition
• Only 1% of climate related overseas development assistance financing mention nutrition explicitly
• Only 3% of Green Climate Fund grants have plans to address malnutrition

On the nutrition side it found that:

• Only 3% of governments that purchase food for their schools and social protection programmes have concrete plans for including climate considerations
• Only 5% of government and business nutrition commitments consider climate
• 0% of 350 food and agriculture companies score strongly on both climate and nutrition action.

By ignoring nutrition, climate stakeholders are missing opportunities to accelerate climate action. By ignoring climate, nutrition stakeholders are missing opportunities to accelerate nutrition action. The ICAN results tell us exactly where those opportunities lie.

COP28 in Dubai next month, and N4G in Paris next year, both provide the opportunities for stakeholders to make a major difference. This might not be easy yet it is simple. By integrating nutrition and climate action, we can make changes that will benefit people and the planet, today and tomorrow.