Food, Climate and Nature FAQs: Understanding the Food System's Role in Healing Our Planet (2024)

FAQs

How does climate change influence our access to healthy food? ›

76% of the world's population gets most of its daily nutrients from plants—yet climate change is already causing droughts and flooding that can destroy staple food crops. If extra CO2 in the atmosphere makes those crops less nutritious, it will be even harder to feed the world's growing population.

Current food systems are leading to rapid biodiversity loss and are contributing to climate change, water degradation and deforestation. Producing the food that we eat emits a quarter of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with more than half of these emissions coming from animal products.

Climate change worsens unsustainable food systems by directly impacting soil fertility, rain patterns, crop yields and food production, food-nutrient and anti-nutrient composition, and nutrient bioavailability. These changes decrease macro- and micronutrients available in the global food supply.

Nature provides direct sources of food and a series of ecosystem services (e.g. pollination, soil formation, nutrient cycling, and water regulation) supporting agricultural activities and contributing to food security and nutrition.

Climate change can disrupt food availability, reduce access to food, and affect food quality. For example, projected increases in temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns, changes in extreme weather events, and reductions in water availability may all result in reduced agricultural productivity.

By growing your own food, you are helping to reduce the high amounts of burning fossil fuels that fill our environment as a direct result of importing foods from farmers. You also are reducing waste from food packaging materials such as man-made plastics and cardboard, that also travel hundreds and thousands of miles.

Cut your food waste

Only buy what you need – and use up what you buy. And don't shy away from buying imperfect-looking fruits and vegetables. They might otherwise get thrown out. Stop the waste, save money, reduce emissions, and help preserve resources for future generations.

Conventional crop production degrades soil health and causes soil erosion. The high content of nitrogen and other nutrients in manure runoff leads to dead zones in downstream waterways.

The food we eat can account for between 10 to 30 per cent of our emissions, depending on what we eat and where we live. For example, cutting dairy and meat from our diets can reduce our emissions by 66 per cent . There are also a number of calculators that allow you to calculate the impact your diet has on the planet.

What diet is best for the environment? ›

A plant-based diet, such as a vegetarian or vegan diet, is also the most sustainable in terms of land and water use than diets that include meat, Kahleova says. In fact, another study found a meat-free diet can reduce a person's water footprint by about 55 percent.

Lastly, environmental shifts affecting agriculture, such as climate change, can influence crop yield and distribution, potentially leading to food scarcity or abundance in different regions.

70% of global freshwater withdrawals are used for agriculture. Not only does this account for over a quarter (26%) of the greenhouse gas emissions globally, but it also has an impact based on its enormous land use. Half of the world's habitable land is used for agriculture, that of which was once covered by forests.

Food systems, which include food production, processing, packaging, transportation, and disposal, are responsible for a whopping one-third of anthropocentric greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions contribute to climate change, which means food and climate change are also irrevocably linked.

Climate change is impacting health in a myriad of ways, including by leading to death and illness from increasingly frequent extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, storms and floods, the disruption of food systems, increases in zoonoses and food-, water- and vector-borne diseases, and mental health issues.

Climate changes, like drought and heat, could affect the availability and quality of some foods, as well as farmers' ability to grow certain crops. Climate change can also affect ecosystem services such as carbon capture and storage.

Furthermore, environmental factors affect the types of foods available for purchase, the cost of those foods, and the means of transportation (a personal vehicle, a social network, or public transportation) that can be used to acquire the foods.

These environmental changes are affecting digestive health and disease in multiple ways. Heat extremes can cause intestinal and hepatic dysfunction. Access to adequate amounts of food of high nutritional content and to clean water is under threat.