Urban Food Consumption and Climate Change

How our eating habits affect more than just our waistline

As climate change research rapidly progresses, one area that lags behind is the study of consumption-based emissions. Consumption-based emissions focus on those stemming from the consumption of goods and services, such as clothing and food. While large scale emission reductions must come from areas such as building energy efficiency and transport infrastructure, changing consumption behaviour at the individual level could have a much greater influence on global emissions than previously thought.

Cities are hubs for human interaction, creativity and innovation. However, as a by-product of that, they are also the source of a large proportion of emissions. Over 50 per cent of the global population lives in cities already and this is expected to increase to 68 per cent by 2050.

Moreover, 70 per cent of cities already suffer the effects of a changing climate and 90 per cent of all urban areas are coastal, placing them in danger of flooding and sea-level rise. Therefore, it seems a sensible starting point to curb emissions from areas that not only produce the most but are also the most vulnerable.

One area of excessive emission production comes from food. According to United Nations’ figures, the global population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2055 and just short of 11 billion by 2100. If we are to successfully sustain 3 billion extra people in the next century, a complete overhaul of our food system — both production and consumption — is required.

The Urban Food Dilemma

The types of food we eat, the way we produce and transport it, and the amounts of it that we waste all impact long-term sustainability and individual health. Securing access to nutritional diets for a projected world population of over 10 billion people is an enormous challenge.

The issue with cities, especially the higher-income ones, is an embedded consumption culture. Although some cities have taken strides to mitigate climate change reducing greenhouse gasses emitted within city boundaries, it is also imperative that they lower emissions associated with products that the cities import from rural areas.

Consumers have a much greater influence on emissions than they think. If meat or dairy that is produced in Latin America, for example, is flown to the UK and ends up on a supermarket shelf in London, the person buying it should likewise bear some responsibility for the product’s associated externalities.

Research recently released found that consumption-based emissions from these cities represented 10 per cent of global emissions, with this figure expected to double by 2050 if left unabated based on model emission pathways under global trends.

Food was identified as one of the main drivers of emissions, contributing to 13 per cent of total emissions produced in the largest cities in 2017. Models based on completed city consumption-based emissions data and accounting for population increase show, that if no action is taken, this figure could rise to 38 per cent by 2050.

It’s worth noting that consumption-based emissions data is notoriously difficult to obtain as it would require a city to know about every single material good imported or purchased in the city and its exact lifecycle emissions.

Such data is changing constantly and largely unavailable outside supply chains in higher-income cities, therefore modelling is the preferred, and currently most accurate, technique to tell the story. However, as tools and data evolve over time, so too will precision and accuracy, allowing us to build upon current data.

Nonetheless, the urban food crisis is not solely to do with greenhouse gas emissions but also about public health. Although the climate crisis and urban nutrition problems are not inherently related, it is possible to tackle both simultaneously. Therefore, the types of foods consumed play a vital role in this battle.

A 2019 report specifically focused on cities and noted the enormous challenges in urban food environments. Higher-income cities have much greater availability of junk foods and increased levels of irresponsible advertising of such products.

Artificial foods high in fat, salt and sugar are commonplace and, as a result, have led to a global health crisis. “Today, over 2 billion adults are overweight and obese, and diet-related non-communicable diseases including diabetes, cancer and heart diseases are among the leading causes of global deaths.”

Even with the enormous amount of overeating, the volume of food wasted — at household, restaurant or business level — is staggering, with many supermarkets and chain restaurants being notoriously wasteful. This becomes even worse when over 820 million people go hungry every day and 150 million children suffer from long-term hunger that impairs their growth and development.

Changing the foods we eat, how they are produced and how much of it we throw away appear to be the obvious solutions but this is easier said than done.

So, how can we change food consumption behaviour?

We can begin by tackling production. In certain cities, such as Portland, 90 per cent of emissions from food come in the production process rather than the transportation, cooking or disposal. Therefore the types of food we eat make a large difference. Meat production is extremely energy and water-intensive compared with growing fruits and vegetables, so shifting focus away from meat provides emission reductions opportunities.

This also feeds into the most commonly used recommendation: a significant shift towards a plant-based diet. Research has recommended that, by 2030, citizens consume no more than 16kg of meat per person per year, down from 58kg currently in order to meet emissions targets. Moreover, limiting dairy to 90kg per year from around a 106kg average in the largest cities could save 19 billion m3 of freshwater annually.

However, to assume that everyone would be willing to make such large changes is a little unrealistic. Instead of the all or nothing approach, if a large volume of people made gradual dietary changes over time — such as not eating meat on certain days — the cumulative effect would be enormous, and the shift would not be so drastic.

Changing the types of food we eat frequently is a key factor but so too is the quantity. The average North American citizen consumes 3100 calories per day, roughly 600 calories higher than the recommended intake. By working to bring this figure back down, emissions could be saved, and the negative health effects associated with overeating could be reduced.

One of the more recent areas of focus has been on the promotion of urban agriculture and farming. Since growing fruits and vegetables uses far less land than rearing livestock, it makes sense to implement practices within suitable urban spaces to not only increase local production but also reduce the distances that food currently travels to reach our plates.

Experts suggest that establishing programmes such as community gardens is “providing incentives for sustainable production of health foods in peri-urban spaces, facilitating market access, and by shortening supply chains.”

The National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility supports these findings. It found that there is indeed scope for urban agriculture to make a significant contribution to food security if integrated into broader food systems and included in future urban planning.

The same study recommended that there must be a considerable increase in food literacy, noting that “we need a population that can be so much better educated about where food comes from, how it’s grown, food chains and so on.”

By changing the narrative on urban agriculture to one where it’s viewed as a tool to combat climate change and build urban resilience rather than as a hobby for the metropolitan middle class, it can be scaled up enough to make an impact.

City governments also have an enormous influence. For example, where the city has authority over procurement and distribution practices, there are opportunities to enable better access to healthy and sustainable foods. This is especially promising where cities are responsible for providing food for schools. By presenting children with healthy foods — this also sends signals to the market that unsustainable and unhealthy foods, and the companies supplying them, will not be supported.

Some cities have already acted on this opportunity. The Sao Paolo municipal government, for example, provides students with locally grown and plant-based meals. Elsewhere, Milan has recently introduced its Urban Food Policy Pact with the goal of transforming food systems in cities to help local agriculture flourish while simultaneously reducing both the economic and carbon costs of food consumption.

The benefits of implementing these recommendations go beyond just emission reductions. Improving food systems has a number of wider, interconnected socio-economic benefits that would actually help to tackle many global issues.

In fact, by increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables and reducing the amount of red meat we eat, it is expected that 170,000 deaths per year could be avoided in the 100 largest cities alone. In turn, this could save upwards of $600 billion, based on the economic value of life, in health costs for avoidable illnesses, ailments and/or deaths.

A commitment to improving food systems requires input from everyone, from the consumers to every single part of the production supply chain, and is not merely a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also to increase the quality of life, avoid the unnecessary loss of life through dietary ailments and limit financial losses associated with them.

It will be no means be an easy task, but the foundations have been laid to build upon in the coming years.