The good and bad of COP28’s menu
Baboki Kayawe | Tuesday November 28, 2023 09:19
The figure of 36,000 is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) expected turnout, while the COP28 presidency anticipates about 70,000.
In mid-May, the COP28 President-Designate, Dr Sultan Al Jaber, received demands for the meeting to serve “predominantly vegan meals”, which are regionally sourced and culturally relevant.
When heeding the call, made collaboratively by the Youth and Children Constituency of the UNFCCC (YOUNGO) and over 140 youth and civil society organisations, together with advocacy group ProVeg International, Jaber wrote that COP28 was focused on the “transformational action on food systems within the wider global climate change agenda”.
ProVeg International is a food awareness organisation “working to transform the global food system by replacing 50% of animal products globally with plant-based and cultivated foods by 2040”, according to its website.
In the climate change debate, livestock farming has come under heavy scrutiny as research indicates that replacing half of meat and dairy consumption with plant-based alternatives can increase climate benefits. Veganism, the studies say, can help cut emissions, land use and water pollution by 75% compared to meat-based diets.
Recently, the UAE Minister of Climate Change and Environment and COP28 Food Systems Lead, Mariam Almheiri, was quoted as appealing for “climate-conscious catering” at scale from the food and beverage sector. She further noted that their vision for COP28 was to fully highlight the climate challenges the world faces.
“We know that our food systems are intrinsically linked to the fate of our natural world, and so we have made the progressive decision to ensure that we explore how the catering provided across the event can be responsible and climate-conscious, helping to echo the emphasis we have placed on the Emirates Declaration,” she said in a press release.
As participants at the imminent conference brace for two-thirds of the meals served to be vegan and vegetarian, something that has been dubbed the “1.5°C aligned menu”, reactions about COP28’s footprint in the global food system and heritage have been varied.
Local climate change advocate, Sharon Tshipa, who is vegetarian, hailed the decision as being in line with the UNFCCC ethos, calling it "walking the talk". She said COP28 was also a critical moment to address attitudes and perceptions around the vegan diet. Tshipa added that people thought of the dishes as not delicious, attracting questions like, "If you stop eating meat what will you eat?" as though meat is the only ingredient in the world, and the only source of protein.
In her opinion, serving less animal-based meals at COP; a trend observable across the conference, event, and catering sectors, could give people a chance to experience non-meat dishes. That COP28 experience could likely bring people to the realisation that plant-based eating was possible and conversion could happen, according to Tshipa.
"The big picture is the climate science that you are already familiar with,” said Tshipa. “The agricultural sector is one of the biggest contributors of greenhouse gases, and also vast amounts of land are cleared to grow livestock feeds. “A single cow drinks at least 40 litres of water per day, yet it takes a lot to produce just one kilogramme of beef in terms of feed.”
Pressure to transition to reduced meat diets directly affects beef economies like Botswana. Professor Nnyaladzi Batisani from the Botswana Institute for Technology and Research Innovation dismissed the concept of veganism and its contribution to emissions mitigation.
Prof Batisani, an expert in food systems, climate and land science, argued that vegan meals also deplete the environment and contribute to emissions.
“First of all, if you grow sorghum for instance, and till the land using a tractor, you will need to fuel that tractor, and that contributes to emissions. “Cultivation also exposes soil organic carbon, resulting in the release of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” he said.
Both dishes are destroying the environment, Batisani further said and gave the analogy of “one kilogramme of spinach and beef requiring the same amount of water to produce”.
The beef sector has come under the spotlight for methane emissions, one of the greenhouse gases affecting the earth’s temperature and climate system. However, Batisani said there are adaptive solutions to this problem.
“Feeding on dry grass leads to the fermentation processes in ruminants, resulting in the production and emission of methane. “However, to control methane production, cattle feeds can be supplemented and giving them leak proteins based on cottonseed oil is effective,’’ he said.
Moreover, he said the savannah ecosystem was more conducive to cattle production than cropping. As an already stressed region food security and also in terms of sovereignty, Prof Batisani said crops and plant-based diets would be more expensive to produce.
Should Botswana be worried about the future of the beef sector as pressure moves towards mainstreaming veganism? Not at all, according to the professor. He argued that beyond Botswana’s beef traditional markets, there is a huge appetite in Asia, the Middle East and Africa itself, especially the DRC. He encouraged the country to be aggressive with the African Continental Free Trade and other trade relationships.
For his part, Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Botswana representative, Dr Rene Czudek, said his organisation considered a healthy diet as a diverse diet including all necessary micro-nutrients. He added that the FAO does not necessarily advocate for a vegetarian or vegan diet, "which can be lacking some important micronutrients, especially for young children’s development where the vegan diet is not recommended”.
He added that while there might be some benefits related to a plant-based diet, this is a personal choice of the consumer for different reasons. On the COP28 decision on meals, Czudek said the move could border on non-appropriateness for the Emirati food culture.
“Could you imagine having a COP taking place in Botswana and the delegates not having a chance to taste Botswana’s beef, lamb, goat, or Tswana chicken? “The choice of diet should be done by the delegates,” he said.
He added that plant-based alternatives could be promoted by offering a vast variety of plant-based food and encouraging delegates to experience a vegetarian or vegan diet for the duration of the COP if they wished so. However, a variety of conventional and traditional food shall be also offered for the delegates who prefer to taste local traditional or continental diet.
Interestingly, Czudek does not think COP28 will be able to shape the global food policy, as "this is not the mandate of the COP".
Umr Hurter, a journalist and Muslim from Cape Town says that "vegan food is not halaal and cannot be equated to being halaal, not even close".
"Many vegan dishes include alcohol which is forbidden in Islam," he said, adding that the only similarities are that both halaal and veganism do not incorporate pork.
Digging deep into the theology of food, he argued that vegan foods are not prepared in halaal-certified kitchens as "there is cross-contamination with un-Islamic foodstuffs in its working environment".
Hurter further explained that the concept of 'tayyib', (which means wholesomeness, clean in Arabic), was yet a critical aspect of Islamic dietary principles.
"One has to implement not only halaal in life, the way they prepare and eat food, but also tayyib; meaning is the food good for you, is it wholesome, does it come from a wholesome source?”
“Have no animals or human beings harmed in the whole process, from where and when it was farmed or gathered, all along the process, no child labour, no forced labour, no slave trade, no harm to any animals or humans, all the way to the kitchen and ultimately on your plate," elaborated Hurter.
*This article is part of extensive reportage on the road to COP28, produced in partnership with MESHA and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Kayawe is a development communicator with an interest in science and climate journalism. She has taken a keen interest in climate change as it is an existential threat to Africa and the continent’s development aspirations. Currently pursuing graduate studies in Natural Resource Management and Participatory Development Communication with the Okavango Research Institute, Kayawe aims to be amongst the continent’s science and development communicators contributing to solution-based climate journalism.