In the run up to every annual COP (Conference of the Parties, aka the global climate conference) event, it is easy to feel as if the current year’s conference (COP31) is far and away the most important ever.
And that’s probably true, given that more than ten years on from the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals the world is well off track on many of the associated Targets, and, critically, we are on a path to soon exceed the 1.5°C marker specified in the Paris Agreement as a result of insufficient progress on global emissions reduction.
Each year that passes without sufficient action on many key Goals, including Climate Action, results in the loss of more lives, takes us past critical planetary boundaries and toward potentially irreversible tipping points, and ultimately threatens immediate-term global security and longer-term planetary stability.
Indeed, a recent piece in The Economist warned that we may have less time to address climate change than we think.
And each passing year of insufficient action increases the amount of progress that must be achieved in an even shorter window.
And while we must move faster on all of the Goals, the brutal fact is that we are living in an increasingly polarized world, with extensive geopolitical conflict and the decline of multilateralism hindering the needed collaboration between nations on the specific social and environmental challenges that are driving extremism and polarization.
It’s a negative circular loop, augmented by numerous recent steps taken by the current U.S. Administration – such as the dismantling of USAID, the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, and the active efforts to expand fossil fuel production while blocking renewable energy development (including the rescission of the Endangerment Finding and the easing of methane restrictions). Such steps are antithetical to advancing collaborative progress on climate and multiple SDGs, and they have the added downside of providing a permission structure for other nations to take similar steps.
The 17 SDGs were designed to provide “a shared blueprint” for all nations to improve the health of people and planet while reducing inequality and spurring economic growth. Yet the world remains on a dangerous path due to insufficient action across the SDG platform, and the warning signs are highly visible as covered below.
Signals: A troubling landscape
For example, on temperature, the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) State of the Global Climate 2025 report, released this past March, noted that the period from 2015 to 2025 marked the warmest eleven years on record and that the year 2025, at 1.43°C, was the second or third warmest year on record.
The report stated that key heat-trapping greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide) have reached their highest levels in 800,000 years, resulting in ocean acidification, the loss of Arctic sea ice, droughts, extreme fires, and a new high in the Earth’s energy imbalance (a measure of the rate at which energy enters and leaves the Earth’s system).
Europe, the world’s fastest warming region, felt the impact greatly over the last several months, with record high temperatures, drought conditions, and extreme wildfires taking a massive toll on all aspects of society. In late October, The Guardian reported that the summer’s excessive heat resulted in the deaths of 50,000 citizens in European cities this summer, with the highest absolute death tolls in Italy, France, Germany, Spain, and the UK.
On water, WMO’s State of Global Water Resources 2025 report, released in September, unveiled numerous warnings regarding humanity’s most precious resource, beginning with the fact that 2025 was “one of the driest years for river discharge globally in 35 years.” Further, less than 40% of river basins show “normal” conditions, terrestrial water storage continues its downward trend of the last 10 years (a threat to future food production) and widespread glacier loss continued for the fourth consecutive year. In addition, the water cycle has become more “erratic and unpredictable” resulting in both severe floods and droughts – with some areas experiencing little time to recover between such events.
On forests, the UNFAO’s recent report, The State of the World’s Forests 2026, noted that while the rate of decline has slowed, roughly 489 million hectares of forests have been lost to deforestation since 1990. Further, 127 million hectares of forest are negatively impacted each year by fires, insects, diseases, and severe weather events.
And on biodiversity, WWF’s recent 2026 Living Planet Report reminded us that we are all part of a single living system that is wholly dependent on biodiversity, and that the degradation of biodiversity is happening “at a pace without precedent in human history.” Notably, WWF’s Living Planet Index shows a 73% decline in monitored vertebrate species around the world from 1970 to 2022.
In addition, the recent Planetary Health Check 2026 report warned that we have now breached 7 of 9 critical planetary boundaries (the “guardrails that define the safe operating space for humanity”) and that the pace of global change has “accelerated significantly” since 2015, increasing the risk of triggering tipping points.
And the Global Footprint Network reminded us that the world continues to overshoot planetary capacity, consuming a level of ecological resources equivalent to 1.7 Earths – a situation which is clearly unsustainable. The organization released its annual calculation which showed that Earth Overshoot Day for 2026 fell on July 30th, the highest level of overshoot to date.
And while 2.1 billion citizens (25.8% of the global population) are moderately or severely food insecure per UNFAO’s latest reporting, the combination of all of these factors – excessive heat, drought, fires, floods, ocean acidification, and biodiversity loss (not to mention conflict) – will continue to threaten food production and global food security in the future.
The essential opportunity in food system transformation
Thus, it is very clear that we are in need of urgent, collaborative action to advance progress across the entire SDG platform if we are to meet the challenge of feeding 10 billion citizens by 2050 within planetary boundaries – and one of the highest leverage opportunities that we have to drive that essential change lies in food.
To start, we all engage with the food system every day. Food is essential to everyone – it nourishes us, and it connects us in myriad ways – so we all have a vested interest in creating and preserving a sustainable food system.
The food system is also incredibly vast. And while it currently feeds billions around the planet daily, its negative impacts are similarly vast, especially with regard to the climate.
The global food system accounts for over a third of annual greenhouse gas emissions. It also consumes about 70% of the world’s freshwater supplies, while contributing to degradation of land, destruction of forests, and loss of biodiversity. As WWF reports, agriculture is “the single largest cause of habitat loss and degradation” and the leading driver of biodiversity decline. It also drives land and water pollution through discarded plastics and packaging. And too often it fuels poor health outcomes through the abundance of low nutrition food items.
So food is indeed a nexus issue, impacting multiple SDG challenges – climate, water security, life on land, deforestation, biodiversity, ocean health, nutrition, hunger, and more.
And given that the world loses and wastes 30-40% of annual food production, food waste is a nexus issue as well, and its impact on multiple SDGs is similarly staggering.
With respect to climate, food loss and waste alone accounts for 8-10% of global emissions.
Food waste is water waste, accounting for about a quarter of the freshwater used for agriculture (trillions of gallons annually).
Wasted food puts unnecessary pressure on oceans, land, forests, and biodiversity, and as UNFAO recently noted, forests account for about 80 percent of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity, and they are also “fundamental for resilient agrifood systems, with nearly one-third of the global population depending on forests and trees for food security and livelihoods.”
And perhaps the most elemental externality, wasted food results in lost nutrition which could otherwise be directed to millions of hungry citizens, while the embedded resources (including fertilizer, labor and human capital) tied up in discarded food could be redirected for value creation elsewhere.
So there is substantial opportunity in food, both in transitioning to a more regenerative and equitable food system and, as a key pillar in that transition, sharply reducing food loss and waste across the globe.
The role for COP31 and beyond
Food has been slowly gaining attention at COP events in recent years but given its critical linkage to climate change and multiple SDGs (and the ability to unlock broad progress across the SDG platform) it deserves much more attention.
Awareness of the need to transform the food system to one that is sustainable, equitable, and regenerative has been growing over the last several years – and that’s a good thing.
The UNFAO is leading this transformation effort, anchored by a landmark report, Achieving SDG2 without breaching the 1.5C threshold: A Global Roadmap. The high-level focus is aptly covered by the subtitle: How Agrifood Systems Transformation Through Accelerated Climate Actions Will Help Achieving Food Security and Nutrition, Today and Tomorrow.
The report was released at COP28 in Dubai, and given the many threats to human and planetary health noted above, it provides an important holistic plan to transform agrifood systems to meet the challenge of providing food security and nutrition for all within planetary boundaries.
The report builds on several Food System Summits led by UNFAO, beginning with the UN Food Systems Pre-Summit in 2021. At that initial event in 2021, Paul Polman gave an inspiring talk on the need for rapidly transforming our food system, reminding us that it is “impossible to achieve the Paris Agreement or the Sustainable Development Goals without drastically changing the food system.”
Polman pointed to the clear business case for such a transformation, noting that “of all the options we’ve looked at in any part of the Sustainable Development Goals, this probably has the highest return, from an ecological, from a social, as well as from a financial perspective.”
And he issued a poignant warning, noting that “With our own existence being put at risk, with enormously attractive economics, it’s just mind-boggling to me that we’re not moving faster.”
And in a clear action call to policymakers and business leaders, he added: “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. And I think the race is on. The race is on for Nature-positive, net zero, resilient food systems that once and for all are allowing us to stay healthy, be obviously abundant and feed the world, and most importantly, be equitable. If we miss this opportunity, we miss mankind. I hope we rise to the challenge.”
Polman’s comments from the 2021 Summit could not be more appropriate for the state of the world today, and this is precisely the way we should be thinking about food, and food loss and waste, at COP31.
We cannot miss the opportunity to transform the food system to provide sufficient nutrition for all global citizens in an equitable manner within planetary boundaries.
We must rise to this challenge.
Like others preceding it, this COP is now the most important COP, requiring global leaders to cut through all of the headwinds and reset the world on a path of greater action on climate change and the entire SDG platform – and one of the highest leverage opportunities lies in food system transformation.
