A Tempest on our Tables: Climate Change Week incorporates Food Systems to Combat Global Warming

As fierce snowstorms pummel the normally sub-tropical countryside of KwaZulu-Natal; Climate Week is in full swing in Cape Town, New York City and elsewhere abroad, underscoring the human influence on the disastrous effects of rising temperatures. The New York event is deliberately held so that it coincides with the United Nations General Assembly meeting, with President Cyril Ramaphosa delivering remarks on Africa’s climate concerns.

Let’s face it; the climate and ecology on Earth has seen better days than the age of the Anthropocene, where human activity and specifically the pressure-cooker of industrialisation and factory farming has driven atmospheric conditions to a boiling point. Extreme rains and crippling floods presently in central Europe are estimated to have doubled in intensity as a direct result of global warming, resulting in acute downpours. The 21st and 22nd of July this year saw the hottest average consecutive days on our planet ever recorded, with 2024 equally on track as the warmest year ever known. This sizzling coincidence highlighted the urgency of South Africa’s new Climate Change Bill signed into law on the 23rd of July – but is this a token legislation, too little too late? 

The theme of Climate Week for this year  is “It’s Time” as climate scientists report that last year broke the 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature rise which was once set as a critical threshold. August’s average global land and ocean surface temperature was 2.29 degrees above the 20th-century average, making it the warmest August in the global climate record. Climate Week, held during the end of September, got its start as a small meeting in 2009 as a lead up to the annual United Nations [UN] Conference of the Parties [COP] on Climate Change. Now in its fifteenth year – described as somewhere between Davos and Burning Man, but for climate change – this event is meant to be an open, less strict and regimented international climate conclave than COP, with the goal of accelerating towards faster practical action on global warming – without the diplomatic red tape and inscrutable geopolitical bondage of an official UN symposium.    

Though the annual United Nations climate meeting generates enormous publicity, Climate  Week in Cape Town, New York and other cities generates vibrant and high-profile events happening in the region’s streets and conference rooms as a less formal networking bazaar for operatives in the climate world. Western Cape Premier Alan Winde has joined other world leaders at the New York Climate Week, discussing the urgent need for major systemic change to address vulnerabilities brought about by the climate crisis and its interconnected social and political injustices. With a focus on food justice and equitable access to healthy food for all, the Cape Town Climate Week 2024 is the third annual event of its kind which provides a platform for various stakeholders to engage in dialogue, collaboration and dynamic action towards building a sustainable future. This event helps raise awareness about the urgency and severity of the climate crisis, the severity of the impact on the continent, its intersections with socio-political injustices – and how food system change can be used as a solution to it. 

Until fairly recently the food system has been omitted as a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, both in the public consciousness and on a policymaking level. However, now climate experts say when it comes to global warming we need to pay attention to what we eat. Food and agriculture make up approximately a third of the pollution that heats our planet, driven by a mass demand of animal products. Food is affecting our climate, and climate change is affecting our food though droughts, extreme temperatures and general conditions that are both unseasonable and dissimilar to typical weather patterns in decades before. Commodities such as cacao reached an all-time high in price per metric tonne in March this year as persistent crop failures and low yields have resulted from changes in the climate, particularly in Western Africa which produces half the global cacao output. 

Almost the entire global carbon budget is spent by the food system alone, which still needs to be addressed fully as a significant driver of climate change. Animal agriculture contributes a large portion of greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Reducing our reliance on animal agriculture will cut emissions and free up land that can be used for carbon sequestration, delivering tangible benefits for climate stabilisation and food security.

About 80% of global agricultural land is used to produce animal-based foods. If this land is reforested and rewilded, it can absorb carbon from the atmosphere, storing it in vegetation and the soil. This creates a carbon sink, helping to offset the climate impact of sectors that are otherwise difficult to address. A shift to sustainable farming needs to be accompanied by significant reductions in the production and consumption of animal-based foods if our food system is and its emissions and waste is to remain within manageable boundaries.

For all the emphasis on fossil fuels and other hydrocarbons, and in a world fixated on electric cars as a leading hope for our climate woes, it’s really our food consumption habits that leaves among the largest singular footprint. And unlike physical infrastructures such as transport, industry, manufacturing and energy generation that are very slow and difficult to manoeuvre towards progress; what people have on their plates is more malleable and open to relatively easy alteration. This Climate Week, and as we approach COP29 in Azerbaijan, it’s the contents of our kitchens that justify the most pressing discussions.  

ENDS

Media Contact

ProVeg South Africa – Wikus Engelbrecht – Communications Manager: [email protected]; +27 64 172 0120

About ProVeg South Africa

ProVeg South Africa is the local branch of ProVeg International. ProVeg is an international food awareness organisation working to transform the global food system by replacing conventional animal-based products with plant-based and cultured alternatives.

ProVeg works with international decision-making bodies, governments, food producers, investors, the media, and the general public to help the world transition to a society and economy that are less dependent on animal agriculture and more sustainable for humans, animals, and the planet.