SAVE FOOD at COP21 in Paris
Reducing food loss and waste in efforts to combat climate change and improve food security
The 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 21) has officially begun today and all attention is now on Paris where the post-2020 global agreement on climate change is scheduled to be concluded. In the process towards COP21, all countries have put forward their emission reduction pledges, submitted in the form of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC), outlining how they plan to address climate change. The INDCs cover national mitigation and adaptation priorities including finance, and this bottom-up approach to formulate national road maps on climate change is highlighting important ambitions from both developed and developing countries.
However, as nearly all countries have submitted their INDCs it is clear that the combined pledges will not be sufficient to stay within the 2 degree target. Therefore, in parallel to the INDC submissions and the formal negotiations, additional efforts are needed to enhance the implementation of climate action. This is addressed under Lima-Paris Action Agenda (LPAA), which brings both state and non-state actors together on the global stage to accelerate cooperative climate action now and into the future in support of the universal climate change agreement which governments will reach at COP21. The Global Initiative on Food Loss and Waste Reduction (SAVE FOOD) and its Partners are in Paris to highlight how reducing global food loss and waste (FLW) offers an important opportunity to meet climate change mitigation and adaptation objectives while improving access to low-emission technologies and contributing to food security. As part of the LPAA on Agriculture, SAVE FOOD will showcase how food supply chain actors, representing farmers, industry, policy-makers and civil society, through a global partnership have committed themselves to reduce FLW. The SAVE FOOD Initiative will use the LPAA Platform to encourage existing and new Partners to join efforts and take concrete action to reduce FLW as part of the global response to combat climate change.
SAVE FOOD is one of the LPAA Initiatives on Agriculture to be presented on 1 December at 15:00-18:15 in the COP21 Conference Centre - Observer Room 12. For further information, see the agenda:
The event is jointly organized by the Government of France and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
For more information on the LPAA on Agriculture: http://newsroom.unfccc.int/lpaa/agriculture/
FAO has recently updated the Food Wastage Footprint calculations and the impacts of FLW on climate change. The information note also highlights the mitigation potential of reducing FLW in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goal 12 - target 12.3, which aims to “by 2030 halve per capita food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses”.
For more information on FAOs work on climate change, including 8 actions on the ground where FLW reduction and SAVE FOOD is one of them: http://www.fao.org/3/a-i5165e.pdf