NOTE: The Noble Peace Tribe is not promoting the U.N. SDGs — at the time (see date on photo above) we posted this page, SDG’s presented a good framework to address the nutritional angle of our project. As you may have noticed, things have changed way too much since March 2020. This page is being kept intact for the sake of transparency.
Context
By 2050 we’ll need to feed two billion more people mostly from low-income countries and underserved communities. In a context where world hunger is on the rise, climate breakdown events are doubling and loss of animal and plant species are accelerating into what is now named “the sixth mass extinction”.
Challenges
- How can we scale up programs aimed at guaranteeing access to nutritious foods and breaking the intergenerational cycle of malnutrition in underserved communities from low-income to high-income countries?
- How to engage underserved communities into participating in good sustainable food systems that are clean and fair for all, and simultaneously tackle the three greatest challenges of our time, climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss?
- How to make all of the above happen while providing a livelihood for local populations?
The Nobel Peace Tribe’s 5-10 Year Food Goal
Scale up good sustainable food systems that are clean
and fair for all, guaranteeing access to nutritious
foods and breaking the intergenerational cycle of
malnutrition in underserved communities from
low-income to high-income countries, while engaging
them into participating, and simultaneously tackling
the three greatest challenges of our time, climate
change, pollution and biodiversity loss, and at the
same time provide a livelihood for local populations.
If we continue the same food system model that includes eating animals plus eggs, dairy and honey, by 2030 we will have an extremely low probability of being able to feed the world population.
In the last few years, more and more scientists have been concluding that even the most “sustainable” forms of meat & dairy production are massively inefficient, polluting, ecologically destructive, and unconscionably wasteful of our shared natural resources. (This, in addition to the fact that humans have no biological need to consume animal products). In a recent study being called “the most comprehensive analysis to date of the damage farming does to the planet,” published in the journal Science and led by scientists at the University of Oxford, the researchers concluded, “Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet.” As reported in The Guardian: “The new research shows that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined – and still feed the world. Loss of wild areas to agriculture is the leading cause of the current mass extinction of wildlife.
The new analysis shows that while meat and dairy provide just 18% of calories and 37% of protein, it uses the vast majority – 83% – of farmland and produces 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions… The scientists also found that even the very lowest impact meat and dairy products still cause much more environmental harm than the least sustainable vegetable and cereal growing.
The study… created a huge dataset based on almost 40,000 farms in 119 countries and covering 40 food products that represent 90% of all that is eaten. It assessed the full impact of these foods, from farm to fork, on land use, climate change emissions, freshwater use and water pollution (eutrophication) and air pollution (acidification). Joseph Poore, lead researcher of the study, told the Guardian, “The reason I started this project was to understand if there were sustainable animal producers out there. But I have stopped consuming animal products over the last four years of this project.”
Taken from: A Well Fed World
How would those chances increase, if we shifted from animal-based food systems to whole foods plant-based diet?
The new research shows that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined – and still feed the world. Loss of wild areas to agriculture is the leading cause of the current mass extinction of wildlife.
Taken from The Guardian article: Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth
Did you know even the UN acknowledges
animal agriculture is responsible for approximately
16.5% of the world’s greenhouse gases?
(and even more if you count Methane)
What’s in your burger? More than you think
Research by Beyond Meat and the University of Michigan Study found that the amount of water in your average swimming pool can produce 312 beef burgers or 60,837 Beyond Burgers.
The research also shows that Americans eat around three burgers a week. If one of these was swapped for a Beyond Meat plant-based alternative burger for one year, it would be like taking the greenhouse gases from 12 million cars off the road for a year.
Both companies say their burgers require between 75 – 99% less water; 93 – 95% less land; and generate 87 – 90% fewer emissions than regular beef burgers, consuming nearly half the energy to make.
These calculations factor in primary raw materials like ingredients, including coconut oil, citrus extract, potato starch and water, and transport, lighting and cold store distribution.
Taken from: United Nations Environmental Program
Although any plant-based food system could be perceived as the better alternative to continue breeding animals to feed humans, The Noble Peace Tribe team exhorts to consider climate resilience and nutrition first and foremost for sustainable food production.
Climate resilience is one solution.
It is important to strengthen food systems and people’s livelihoods to anticipate and adapt to the effects of climate variability and extremes.
Addressing climate variability and extremes and their impact on food security and nutrition requires a focus on resilience. Context-specific interventions aimed at anticipating, limiting, and adapting to the effects of climate variability and extremes and building the resilience of livelihoods, food systems and nutrition to climatic shocks and stresses.
Scaled-up actions across sectors are urgently needed to strengthen the resilience of livelihoods and food systems to climate variability and extremes. Such actions should take place through integrated disaster risk reduction and management and climate change adaptation policies, programs and practices with short-, medium- and long-term vision.
To keep reading this FAO report on “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World”, click here.
The Noble Peace Tribe champions nutrition sovereignty over food sovereignty because…
NUTRITION is essential to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Taken from: The State of Food Security and Nutrition in The World 2018 (pdf, p. 14)
Taken from: The State of Food Security and Nutrition in The World 2018 (pdf, p. 15)
Taken from: The State of Food Security and Nutrition in The World 2018 (pdf, p. 66)
Forests and tree-based systems to support global food & nutrition sovereignty
Despite impressive productivity increases, there is growing evidence that conventional agricultural strategies fall short of eliminating global hunger, result in unbalanced diets that lack nutritional diversity, enhance exposure of the most vulnerable groups to volatile food prices, and fail to recognize the long-term ecological consequences of intensified agricultural systems.
There is growing recognition that forests and tree-based systems complement farmland agriculture in providing food security, contributing to dietary diversity and quality, and addressing nutritional shortfalls. Forests and tree-based systems are particularly critical for food security and nutrition for the poorest and the most vulnerable, including women.
Taken from: “Forests, Trees and Landscapes for Food Security and Nutrition. A Global Assessment Report” and its Policy Brief, published as IUFRO World Series Volume 33 in 2015
The National Geographic short film “A forest garden with 500 edible plants could lead to a sustainable future” showcases that a forest garden – even in the temperate climate of the UK – is a realistic and achievable solution to feed people, restore ecosystems and address climate change.
The UN now also acknowledges ecosystem restoration as unparalleled opportunity for job creation, food security and addressing climate change. The recently declared UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030) “aims to massively scale up the restoration of degraded and destroyed ecosystems as a proven measure to fight the climate crisis and enhance food security, water supply and biodiversity.”
Source: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/1182090/icode/
Congratulations for reading till the end of this section!!! WooooHooo!!!
Now! Do NOT miss out these other sections on
The Noble Peace Tribe website about related themes:
EDIBLE FRUIT FORESTS
VEGANIC PERMACULTURE
And this post on The Noble Peace Tribe Blog: