Issue #74: A fork in negotiations
Our Top Stories
A fork in the road: As COP28 enters its final days, negotiations about the future of food are reaching their concluding. As Vox reports, this year’s COP menu was the first to be two-thirds plant-based, which is a sign that world leaders are beginning to understand the high emissions of the agricultural sector. However, global policymakers now stand at a fork in the road on how to address these high emissions. Many environmental scientists have called on wealthy countries to cut back on meat and eat more plant-based meals - which would certainly slash agricultural emissions, but is politically challenging. The more palatable, yet far less effective, approach is to continue eating meat while relying on new technologies and farming practices. The world needs a mix of both methods, but it is up to the COP policymakers to decide on the path to take. [Vox]
Lack of green job awareness: Only 27% of young people had heard the term “green jobs” and could explain what it meant, as found in a Generation Green Jobs Survey. This finding was based on a survey of 2,050 people in their teens and early 20s. Even after the term ‘green jobs’ was explained, less than half of respondents were familiar with the kinds of jobs that would exist in the green economy. Also, with only 5% of young people seeing green jobs as appropriate for non-university educated individuals - despite many roles being well-suited to vocational training - there is a strong need to educate and raise awareness of the current environmental skills gap in the UK. [Edie]
Airline greenwashing: The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ordered three airlines - Air France, Lufthansa, and Etihad - to remove ad campaigns which exaggerated their environmental sustainability credentials, highlighted by Edie. Such “absolute” claims, which apply to an airline’s overall business model, need to be supported by a “high level of substantiation”, the ASA states. All three companies failed to present detailed information about the claims they were making, with Etihad providing no evidence at all that it is engaged in environmental advocacy. [Edie]
Business Spotlight - Tesco
Tesco has announced plans to install solar panels on 100 of its large UK stores within three years, in a bid to reduce its carbon emissions and manage rising electricity costs. The initiative kicked off with the Thetford store, which saw more than 1,000 solar panels fitted as part of a Power Purchase Agreement with Atrato Onsite Energy. Tesco Group’s chief executive officer Ken Murphy said: “As we all face the effects of climate change, scaling up our use of clean renewable energy has never been more important”. [Edie]
Research Corner
Tasty vertical farms: Sara Jaeger and her team have found that vertically farmed greens taste as good as organic ones, which they hope will address consumer scepticism about the viability of vertical farms. In the first study of its kind, researchers asked participants to blind taste and rate rocket, baby spinach, pea shoots, basil, and parsley grown under the two different approaches. Both rocket salads received a score of 6.6 out of 9. Proving that consumers are in support of the vertical farms will give companies greater opportunity to scale in the face of climate change. [ScienceDirect]
Stat Attack
“Americans eat almost 70 percent more meat per capita than Europeans, and 200 percent more than the global average. If the US sustains its current level of meat consumption and doesn’t change its farming practices, while the energy and transportation sectors decarbonise, agriculture could become the biggest source of America’s emissions by 2050.”
Source: EWG
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The Big Picture
About Reewild
The food and agriculture industry is at the heart of the climate crisis, generating around a third of man-made greenhouse emissions. And while the challenge of reducing its impact may seem beyond our grasp, it is one that we all have the power to tackle.
We believe that the solution lies in climate transparency. That’s why we’re equipping businesses with the means to evaluate and communicate the emissions of their products. This, in turn, means consumers are armed with credible, independent information, which can be used to make more sustainable choices.
We know that many people want to take climate action but lack the necessary tools and information to do so. We're confident that, armed with the right knowledge, everyone can and will do their bit to build a greener, more sustainable food system.