The significance of World Environment Day 2013

N Munal Meitei *

World Environment Day 2013 :: Think. Eat. Save

I did not wonder while I joined a marriage ceremony in a Christian family where a grand lunch for about 1000 peoples were easily arranged within a medium sized space. The services that were provided were also quite satisfactorily with only a very few peoples and the lost were so much minimum. On the other hand, we have seen numerous Ushavs in most of the big temples every day.

In the individual houses also for some or other religious ceremonies, frequent Ushavs are celebrated in our society every day. The amount of food lost may be calculated upto one third. The difference between the above two cases is the first is served in buffet and the second on individual basis. The theme for this year's World Environment Day 2013 is "Think. Eat. Save. Reduce Your Foodprint," focusing on reducing food waste. Our blue planet is the only place in the Universe for the living beings.

Yet, our home Earth is visibly losing its vitality and pristineness due to the reckless policies and ruinous acts of the human beings. Its resources are being exhausted and the safe livelihood of the humankind is gravely endangered. Alarming environmental changes and disasters, unprecedented and unheard of before, occur at a greater rate.

Climate change with ensuing water shortage, desertification, soil and vegetation degradation lead not only to depletion of natural resources, but also threaten the social and economic development of the entire world.

World Environment Day is a day for people from all walks of life to come together to ensure a cleaner, greener and brighter outlook for themselves and future generations. World Environment Day is also meant to tackle the environmental challenges that include climate change, global warming, disasters and conflicts, harmful substances, environmental governance, ecosystem management and resource efficiency.

India was selected as the host of World Environment Day 2011 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The Environment Day 2011 slogan was 'Forest: Nature at your service'. Forests cover 1/3 of the earth's land mass and play a key role in our battle against climate change, and releasing oxygen into the atmosphere while storing carbon dioxide – this is what the theme aims to reinforce. The theme for World Environment Day 2012 was Green Economy: Does it include you? The first part of the theme focuses to deal with the subject of the Green Economy because for many, the concept is yet a little too complex to understand.

This year's theme of "Think.Eat.Save. Reduce Your Foodprint," focusing on reducing food waste and loss including food waste as part of the transition to a low-carbon, resource-efficient future launched earlier this year by UNEP, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and partners. We live in a world of plenty, where food production outstrips demand, yet many people are undernourished and childhood stunting is a silent pandemic.

One way to narrow the hunger gap and improve the well-being of the most vulnerable is to address the massive loss and waste inherent in today's food systems. Currently at least one third of all food produced fails to make it from farm to table. This is foremost an affront to the hungry, but it also represents a massive environmental cost in terms of energy, land and water.

There's one figure that no one on the planet - at least no one who takes human rights and human dignity seriously - should be complacent about. One in eight people on earth i.e. 870 million human beings, go to bed hungry each night, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Since 1990 this number has been reduced by 130 million, from a starting one billion.

However, that is no reason to lean back contentedly, especially since the world's population is predicted to increase by two billion to nine billion by 2050, posing an incredible challenge to the international community. We'll need to produce enough food for an additional two billion people, but many of the resources required to produce it - fuel, energy, water, fertiliser and land - are finite or limited.

Around one third of the world's food is never eaten – that's 1.3 billion tonnes of food thrown away or left to rot every year. Food waste costs our customers money $1,045 a year for the average UK family - at a time when the pressure on household budgets is greater than ever. It is also widespread; 30 per cent of Polish consumers admit to throwing food away, while 28 per cent of household waste in South Korea is food.

Food demand may well double by 2050 as world population continues to grow and changing food habits cause it to rise sharply. By contrast, agriculture is struggling with the consequences of climate change in many regions. And, to make things worse, global resources become increasingly scarce. Every year, for example, much fertile soil is irrevocably lost. Furthermore the stocks of fossil plant nutrients cannot be expanded infinitely. Food security must thus be ensured without increasing the amount of resources used. If we cannot achieve this, the world food system is likely to enter into a deeper and deeper vicious circle that can only be broken with enormous effort.

Food losses and food waste occur at every stage in the food chain from farm to consumer. Crops are sometimes left unharvested because their appearance does not meet strict quality standards. Food can be mishandled or stored improperly during transport. Large portions, large menus, and poor training for food handlers contribute to food waste in restaurants, while in households it mainly consists of fresh products.

Zero waste is a key commitment of the UN wide Zero Hunger Challenge announced by Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon at Rio +20. Half the industrialized world's food is wasted by retailers or consumers. With the looming threat of factory farming practices, GMOs and mercury emissions contaminating our food, most of us are concerned with what we are eating, and rightfully so. Our food problems are considerable. According to a recent report, one-third to one-half of the four billion metric tons of food produced yearly goes to waste. Meanwhile, 20,000 children under the age of 5 die from hunger every day.

At the moment, we can bolster our communities' food security by growing our own food, as well as buying locally. Security isn't the only benefit here, however—numerous studies show that getting food locally emits fewer greenhouse gases than importing it does. World Environment Day provides a high-profile forum to discuss such solutions, and to develop interconnecting frameworks for their implementation. It is a day to remember that for humanity to continue flourishing, we have to work together.

Food waste has different causes at different points of the supply chain. It is a complex problem but the solutions are simple and everyone can win by implementing them. All it takes is bringing common sense back into the food system: using and eating what you can; redistributing what you can't; feeding food not fit for humans to livestock; and only then turning to other waste solutions, such as composting or anaerobic digestion. In today's globalised market, we drive food prices up by buying more than we need and discarding it. We are literally taking food out of the mouths of the hungry in Africa, Asia and the rest of the world.

The resources embedded in food production – such as land, energy and water – massively increase the impact of this scale of waste on our planet's finite capacity to sustain us and other life. About 10 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions arise from producing food that no-one eats. We are expanding agricultural land and moving into the world's remaining rainforests to grow food that is then wasted in farms, factories, pack-houses, supermarkets, restaurants and homes.

Waste has become so endemic to food production that we now accept as common practice attitudes and practices that were taboo to our ancestors. The planet simply cannot sustain this system. Therefore with the celebration of World Environment Day, 2013, let us "Think, Eat, Save and Reduce our Foodprint," for the sack of our future generation.