| For the first time ever, the United Nations (UN) climate change conference will host pavilions dedicated to food system change, including the Food4Climate Pavilion, organised by global food awareness NGO ProVeg International and 15 other global partners. |
| The United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as the Conference of the Parties, or COP for short, is held annually and serves as the formal meeting of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) parties to assess global progress in dealing with climate change. The 27th conference, COP27, will take place in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, from 6-18 November 2022. |
| Here the Food4Climate Pavilion will highlight, to the nearly 200 country delegations visiting the conference, how the food and agriculture system needs to change in order to effectively tackle the climate crisis. |
| Worldwide, meat and dairy production provides just 18% of calories consumed, but uses 83% of global farmland. In addition to this, global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from animal agriculture are twice those from plant-based diets. ProVeg believes that without addressing food systems at a UN level, global climate targets as set out in the Paris Agreement, will not be met. |
| “Approval by the UN to set up the Food4Climate Pavilion at COP27 really marks a tectonic shift in the UN’s approach to food systems,” Raphael Podselver, Head of UN Advocacy at ProVeg, said. |
| “We hope the pavilion will engage policymakers around the world to address the challenges posed by agriculture and encourage countries to embrace the solutions.” |
| Under the banner, Diet Change Not Climate Change, ProVeg and partners will be engaging UN member states to transition to more plant-based food systems and diets as part of their climate policy. |
| “Inaction on food systems at this stage is no longer an option. We need to transition more to plant-based diets to bring down both methane and CO2 emissions effectively,” Podselver said. |
| “The scientific evidence shows that this transition can help put the brake on climate change as well as ensure food security for future generations.” |
