While the COVID-19 pandemic continues to monopolize the news cycle, the world continues to face another threat—climate change.
But the pandemic can also offer an opportunity for reflection on the relationship between climate change and global food chains.
On “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg,” Dani talks about how the food system contributes between 21-37 percent of total global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). And the World Research Institute (WRI) finds that if food waste alone were a country, it would be the world’s third-largest emitter of GHG emissions.
But food can also be a solution to the climate crisis. “Eight of the top 20 [climate] solutions are directly food-related,” Paul Hawken, founder of Project Drawdown, tells Food Tank.
Organizations around the world are also working to address the world’s biggest threat. Recently, Food Tank highlighted 36 of these organizations that are using strategic communications, grassroots organizing, and the law to reduce carbon emissions and reverse the effects of climate change.
Dani talks with Paul Hawken of Project Drawdown, Jack Kittinger from Conservation International, and Dr. Rattan Lal, a renowned soil scientist at Ohio State University and the recipient of the 2020 World Food Prize. They discuss ways not only to mitigate, but reverse, climate change through food systems policies, collaboration, and innovation.
Photo courtesy of Katie Rodriguez, Unsplash
