UN Climate Panel Names Diets Featuring Plant-Based Foods as a Key Climate Solution

The UN's climate science panel has named a shift in what we eat as one of the ways to tackle climate change. Moving to balanced, sustainable healthy diets, together with cutting food waste and using bio-materials, could cut 2.1 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent a year, the IPCC says.

The figure comes from the Summary for Policymakers of the Working Group III report on mitigation, part of the Sixth Assessment Report, approved by 195 governments and published today. For the first time the panel devotes a chapter to the demand side: how changes in what people consume can cut emissions.

The IPCC defines balanced diets as those featuring plant-based foods such as coarse grains, legumes, fruit and vegetables, nuts and seeds, alongside animal foods produced in low-emission systems. It finds, with high confidence, that shifting to such diets has potential synergies with sustainable development. Across all sectors, lifestyle and demand-side changes could cut emissions by 40-70% by 2050.

Having the right policies, infrastructure and technology in place to enable changes to our lifestyles and behaviour can result in a 40-70% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This offers significant untapped potential. The evidence also shows that these lifestyle changes can improve our health and wellbeing.

That is Working Group III co-chair Priyadarshi Shukla in the IPCC press release.

It builds on the panel's 2019 land report, which said plant-based diets offer major opportunities to limit climate change, and last year's finding that animal foods cause twice the emissions of plant foods.

The world's climate scientists agree: our plates are part of the solution.