India’s dietary habits sustainable, climate-friendly

In its latest Living Planet Report, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) called India’s food consumption pattern as the most climate-friendly among G20 nations and highlighted that India’s diet is the least harmful to the environment. If all countries adopted India’s consumption patterns, the world would require less than one earth to support food production by 2050, making it a model for sustainability, as highlighted by a Hindustan Times report. The WWF report states that any gains from more sustainable food production will count for little if we do not also address food consumption. If everyone in the world adopted the current food consumption patterns of the world’s major economies by 2050, we exceed the 1.5°C climate target for food-related greenhouse gas emissions by 263% and require one to seven earths to support us. There are also compelling public health reasons to address unsustainable diets. Overconsumption, especially of fats and sugars, is driving a worldwide obesity epidemic: over 2.5 billion adults are overweight, including 890 million living with obesity.

The WWF report states that in some countries, promoting traditional foods will be an important lever to shift diets. For example, the National Millett Campaign in India is designed to increase national consumption of this ancient grain, which is good for health and highly resilient in the face of climate change. The report adds that it is possible to provide a growing global population with enough nutritious, healthy food — but it will require different dietary shifts depending on current levels of nutrition and consumption. For developed countries, these need to include a greater proportion of plant-based foods and fewer animal products. For countries facing significant burdens of undernutrition, hunger and food insecurity, however, achieving nutritious diets may require increasing consumption, including of animal-source foods.

Emphasizing that eating more sustainable diets would reduce the amount of land needed to produce food, the WWF report points out that grazing land, in particular, could be freed up for other purposes, including nature restoration and carbon sequestration. Seafood choices can make a difference too, for example by prioritizing farmed species low on the aquatic food chain.

The Executive Summary of the report warns that the global food system is inherently illogical. It is destroying biodiversity, depleting the world’s water resources and changing the climate, but is not delivering the nutrition people need. Despite record production, some 735 million people go to bed hungry each night. Obesity rates are rising even as nearly a third of the world’s population do not regularly get enough nutritious food. Food production is one of the main drivers of nature’s decline: it uses 40% of all habitable land, is the leading cause of habitat loss, accounts for 70% of water use and is responsible for over a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. The hidden costs of ill health and environmental degradation in the current food system amount to US$10–15 trillion annually, representing 12% of global GDP in 2020. Even though the food system is the number one driver of environmental degradation, it is not adequately addressed in major international environmental policy.

Shocking facts emerge from the report about food loss and waste. An estimated 30–40% of all food produced is never eaten, representing around a quarter of total global calories. Embedded in lost or wasted food are one-fifth of agricultural land and water used for crops, as well as 4.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. In fishing, the incidental catch of non-target species (commonly referred to as bycatch) results in nine million tonnes of dead sea life (over 10% of total ocean catch) being discarded. This also highlights the immense environmental, economic and human health opportunities of addressing food loss and waste.

The Summary points out that there is a need for coordinated action to scale nature-positive production to provide enough food for everyone while also allowing nature to flourish. We have to ensure everyone in the world has a nutritious and healthy diet, produced without triggering tipping points, which will involve changing food choices. It is also essential to reduce food loss and waste and increase financial support and foster good governance for sustainable, resilient, nature-positive food systems.