Wasted food – if it were a country – would be the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.
Reducing food waste can help to cut down on these emissions, feed those who are hungry and improve food security.
Food waste experts tell Carbon Brief that “food loss and waste” remains a “major issue”.
There are a range of solutions to tackle the problem, they say, but more action is needed to put such actions in place.
This in-depth Q&A outlines why wasted food causes emissions, why it has become such a big issue and how countries and companies plan to slash waste in the years ahead.
- What is food loss and waste?
- Where does food go after it is wasted?
- Why is food waste a climate issue?
- What are countries doing to reduce food waste?
What is food loss and waste?
Around one-third of all food goes to waste during different steps of the production process – from farm, to truck, to fridge.
Food “loss”, according to the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) 2021 food waste index report, is defined as all of the edible parts of food that end up discarded in early parts of the supply chain – for example, vegetables that rot in fields before being picked, crops hit by disease and meat that spoils due to lack of transport refrigeration.
These losses occur before the food reaches supermarkets. Around 15% of food produced globally is lost during harvest or slaughter, a 2021 WWF-UK report found.
Food “waste” refers to the discarding of food and the inedible parts of food that are not consumed by people at a retail, food service or household level. This waste can end up in landfill, compost or animal feed.
The vast majority of food waste goes to landfill. As this food breaks down over time, it generates greenhouse gases, primarily methane. (See: Why is food waste a climate issue?)
The chart below shows that the majority of supply chain and household food loss and waste is considered sufficiently edible.
A 2020 World Bank report said that reducing food loss and waste can “make a profound difference” for multiple challenges – reducing hunger, strengthening economies and protecting the environment.
In addition to avoiding greenhouse gas emissions, shifts and reductions in food loss and waste can “promote environmental co-benefits” for biodiversity along with soil and water health, a recent study noted.
Dr Christian Reynolds, a food loss and waste expert and a reader in food policy at the Centre for Food Policy in City, University of London, says waste is a constant struggle because “everybody’s got to eat and food degrades”. He tells Carbon Brief:
“Food loss and waste is a major issue for us as a civilisation to tackle. But it’s something that we’ve been trying to tackle for a long time.”
The UNEP report estimates that food waste from households, retail and the food service industry amounts to 931m tonnes every year. Of this, 61% comes from households, 26% from food service and 13% from retail.
Where does food go after it is wasted?
The majority of food loss and waste ends up in landfills, where it produces methane. Food is the most common material put into landfill and incineration in the US, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Incinerating waste results in a lower greenhouse gas impact than allowing it to decompose in a landfill.
Composting food waste also has a smaller environmental impact, resulting in 38-84% fewer emissions compared to landfill, a 2023 Nature study found.
The image below shows the EPA’s “food recovery hierarchy”, an inverted pyramid highlighting the most to least preferred options when dealing with excess food.
The most favourable option is to reduce the amount of extra food produced in the first place. The “last resort” choice is to dispose through landfill or incineration. Composting is the second “least preferred” option.
Dr Dawn King, a senior lecturer in environment and society at Brown University in Rhode Island, says that the main priority for food waste should be, as outlined by the EPA, to “get food to people who are hungry”.
Composting often requires either an organised pickup or a garden to compost at home, she tells Carbon Brief, so it is not always an available option for households.
Individuals can take action on food waste in other ways, but options can be limited, Reynolds says. He tells Carbon Brief:
“For both dietary change and for food loss and waste, there is an individualisation of responsibility to some degree. But, also at the same point, there are some system drivers for this.
“An individual can decide what portion and pack size of something they purchase. However, they can’t decide what portion and pack sizes are on display in the supermarket.”
Why is food waste a climate issue?
Producing food in general – particularly meat and dairy – requires a significant amount of land, water and other resources. It is also often costly to produce.
The global food system from production through to consumption is responsible for around one-third of the world’s annual human-caused emissions.
Greenhouse gases from wasted food account for around half of these emissions, a 2023 study found.
The study said that, in 2017, global food waste resulted in 9.3bn tonnes of CO2-equivalent (GtCO2e) emissions – roughly the same as the total combined emissions of the US and the EU that same year.
As food breaks down in landfill, it generates methane – a potent greenhouse gas. Per unit of mass, methane is 84-86 times stronger than CO2 over 20 years and 28-34 times as powerful over 100 years.
The table below shows a WWF-UK analysis of how different commodities, such as fruit, vegetables and meat, contribute to the global level of food waste.
| Commodity | Volume of waste (million tonnes)³ |
% of total production | Value of waste ($million)⁴ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fruit & vegetables | 449 | 26% | 160,157 |
| Roots, tubers & oil crops | 261 | 15% | 44,095 |
| Meat & animal products | 153 | 12% | 99,738 |
| Cereals & pulses | 196 | 14% | 56,199 |
| Fish & Seafood | 25 | 44% | – |
| Other | 90 | 6% | 8,930 |
The contribution of different food commodity types to the global volume of food waste (in millions of tonnes), the percentage of total production that goes to waste and the value of this waste (in millions of USD). Source: WWF-UK (2021)
It is not only the methane emissions from rotted food that cause an environmental issue. All of the emissions associated with the production of a piece of food that is wasted – from the land used to grow it to the plastic used to package it – could have been avoided if the food was not produced and left to waste.
Food wasted in later stages of the supply chain – such as after it reaches a supermarket shelf or a consumer’s fridge – leads to even more waste due to the extra resources needed for packaging and transportation. (Food transport is not widely considered to majorly contribute to total food emissions, but some research challenges this assumption.)
The EPA says that 560,000 square kilometres of agricultural land is used to produce US food that is lost or wasted each year – an area the size of California and New York combined. This food would provide enough calories to feed more than 150 million people each year, the EPA adds.
Another issue to consider is the “carbon opportunity cost” of the land used to grow food, especially high-emitting options, such as meat and dairy.
In short, if agricultural land used to grow wasted food was instead restored to forest or wild grasslands, the land would be able to store more carbon, with additional benefits for biodiversity.
So tackling and reducing food loss and waste would reduce emissions from across the supply chain and prevent needless resources being used to produce food that does not end up being eaten.
According to the UN, food loss and waste generates around 8% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions each year – around the same as the global tourism industry. This also comes at a time when as many as 783 million people were impacted by hunger in 2022, according to the FAO.
From a climate perspective, the right solutions to waste can help “unlock a fairer, [more] equitable and resilient food system”, says Reynolds.
Reynolds says food waste should be a bigger focus point for governments in their efforts to reduce emissions. He tells Carbon Brief:
“That’s an obvious thing that we could be putting within the NDCs [Nationally Determined Contributions, pledges made by each country under the Paris Agreement] as a piece of policy work to actually highlight food loss and waste reduction as part of the NDCs, and then that would cascade downward.
“There has been some discussion of food loss and waste within the wider climate, but it seems a very obvious pathway that we are not using to our fullest extent.”
What are countries doing to reduce food waste?
Food waste is targeted in a number of different ways through policy, campaigns and individual action.
A global goal to reduce waste forms a key part of the UN’s 12th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) – a set of targets for countries to help tackle climate change, end poverty, improve health and boost economic growth.
One section of SDG 12 aims to halve per-capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels, and also reduce food losses in production and supply chains by 2030.
But many countries have yet to tackle the issue head on in their policy plans relating to climate.
According to a report by the climate-action non-governmental organisation WRAP, 21 countries committed to reducing food loss and/or food waste in their NDCs submitted before the COP27 climate summit last year.
Of the 193 countries that submitted NDCs, nine countries specifically committed to reducing food waste and 14 committed to reducing food losses, the report found.
Several other countries including the UK, South Africa and parts of the EU refer to other policy documents that mention food loss and waste reduction, but the report notes these policies are not directly included in the NDCs.
The UK and EU
The UK government relies on voluntary action to reduce food waste. For example, in recent years a number of UK supermarkets have removed “best before” dates from certain products in an effort to reduce waste.
A “best before” date is used to signify when food is at its peak quality. A “use by” date is a stricter rule noting the timeframe by which food is safe to consume.
Removing “best before” dates from fresh products such as apples, bananas and potatoes could help to “prevent 100,000 tonnes of household food waste”, according to a 2022 WRAP report.
However, in terms of official policies, the UK government recently disposed of plans to make food waste reporting mandatory for some businesses. Campaigners criticised the decision and said these measures could have reduced food prices and helped tackle climate change, the Guardian reported.
Reynolds says this decision was a “real shame and a missed opportunity” for the UK government. He tells Carbon Brief:
“Food loss and waste is being measured by many companies already. The majority of the supermarkets already are doing this, it’s just not publicly disclosed. So I think there is already some of this happening, it’s just that a piece of legislation would have levelled the playing field.”
Dr Carrie Bradshaw, a food waste policy expert and lecturer in law at the University of Leeds, adds that mandatory reporting is a “necessary, but not sufficient, measure to tackle food waste”.
Measures are also taking place in certain EU countries and on a wider scale across the bloc.
The European Commission has proposed setting targets for EU countries to reduce food waste by 10% in processing and manufacturing, and by 30% at retail and household level by 2030.
In France, supermarkets are legally required to donate unsold food instead of letting it go to waste. A similar law exists in Italy.
Bradshaw says there are many “economic, social and environmental implications of food waste”. She tells Carbon Brief:
“Arguably in seeking to tackle food waste, we should be aiming not at absolute reductions…but reducing the broader climate and other environmental impacts of food waste.
“Distributing the costs of food waste reduction fairly across the supply chain remains a real challenge for food waste reduction, and is why measures which take a joined-up, whole supply chain approach are likely to be important. This in turn is a limitation of the more targeted efforts you see in France, China or South Korea.”
The US
Food waste remains a growing problem. In the US, food waste grew by almost 5% between 2016 and 2021.
Research suggests that as much as half of all US food produced is left to rot, fed to livestock or put from field to landfill due to “cosmetic standards”, the Guardian reported.
The US department of agriculture advises a number of ways for farmers to reduce food loss and waste – including partnering with food delivery box services or donating food.
At the end of last year, Congress approved the Food Donation Improvement Act which “expands liability protections for the donation of food and grocery products”. A group of US lawmakers also recently proposed federal legislation aimed to halve food waste by 2030.
On a state level, some states offer tax breaks to farmers and businesses who donate food rather than letting it go to waste. Others are diverting food waste away from landfill.
Certain restaurants, cafés, supermarkets and stadiums in New York City are required to separate food scraps and other organic waste.
Since a composting law took effect in California at the start of 2022, every jurisdiction in the state has been required to provide organic waste collection services for households and businesses.
But there has been “uneven progress” on the goal to redirect food waste away from landfill since the “groundbreaking” law was implemented, the Los Angeles Times reports.
King says that a lot of food waste is “preventable”, but she believes there is a lack of incentive for many farmers to avoid it. In some cases, it is not “economically efficient” for farmers to sell slightly imperfect fruits and vegetables, King adds.
China
A Nature study published in 2021 estimated that about 27% – or 349m tonnes – of food went to waste each year from 2014-18 in China.
In 2020, the Chinese government announced the “clean plate campaign” as a measure to tackle food waste and raise public awareness on food security.
Sally Qiu, a research associate at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, says this campaign, and an anti-food waste law implemented in 2021, form part of China’s wider focus on food waste.
The anti-food waste law is a “code of conduct for different entities – like government, companies, schools, catering services – to improve their food procurement management process”, Qiu tells Carbon Brief.
She notes that the “clean plate campaign” appears to be “coming from a food security standpoint, rather than a climate crisis standpoint”. She adds:
“One of the side effects is that reducing food waste is good for the climate.”
Qiu says there has not been a substantial evaluation of progress so far on the success of these initiatives. She says:
“It is a very well-intended campaign. They don’t want people to waste things. But, just based on what I have seen so far, it’s more of an ideal rather than a very substantial achievement [in] reducing a lot of food waste.”
China’s action plan to hit peak emissions by 2030 sets out a goal to “put a resolute stop to wasteful behaviours, and work tirelessly to reduce food waste in the catering industry”. Qiu describes this goal as a “turning point” of the Chinese government making the “connection with food waste and climate change”.
Qiu says the campaign and law are a “good start”, but more tangible targets may have a bigger impact. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These laws and initiatives are more like they’re encouraging people to do certain things. But it didn’t really say what the goal [is]. Peaking carbon has a very clear goal of 2030…I think maybe for food waste, they can come back with more empirical research…Maybe they can set a more quantitative target, an evidence-based target.”
The post In-depth Q&A: What food waste means for climate change appeared first on Carbon Brief.
A relatively ambitious deal to reduce the shipping industry’s 3% of global emissions now looks more likely after four days of closed-door talks in London, observers say.
The International Maritime Organization (IMO), which oversees the negotiations, said there had been “constructive discussions” and “genuine willingness within the group to make concrete further progress”.
Em Fenton, senior director at the NGO Opportunity Green who attended the talks last week, said they “demonstrated a strong spirit of solidarity in the face of blatant attempts to undermine the credibility, ambition and equity of a hard-fought multilateral agreement”.
After several years of debate, governments provisionally agreed in April 2025 on a “Net-Zero Framework” (NZF) – a series of emissions reduction targets for shipowners aimed at incentivising them to use cleaner fuels, backed up with financial rewards for meeting the targets and fees for missing them.
But in October 2025, after a high-profile intervention by US President Donald Trump and threats of US sanctions and visa restrictions, the US convinced a majority of voting nations to postpone the adoption of the NZF for a year.
UCL analysis found that, of those who expressed a view at last week’s talks, 38 were in favour of an NZF-style solution while only 17 were against. Those opposed are “consistently composed of strongly fossil fuel-aligned governments”.
An observer of the talks, who did not want to be named, said the countries opposed include the US, Russia, India, Thailand, Argentina, Ecuador and Uruguay, as well as eight oil-rich Gulf nations and shipowner-reliant Liberia and Panama. Governments that support an NZF-style deal include China, Brazil, Mexico, Türkiye, Canada, Australia, Chile, nine African nations, most European countries and small islands.
A new framework to tackle shipping emissions could be adopted if two-thirds of countries that are present and signed up to a regulation called Marpol Annex VI – endorsed by just over 100 states – vote in favour of it, as they did in April 2025.
UCL’s analysis said it was “reassuring” that governments which had taken strong positions in the media against the NZF were being more compromising in the negotiations.
Tweaks are probable
While there is majority support for the NZF, UCL said adopting it would be difficult politically. “The process from here could therefore be as much about producing what appears to be a new package, but one that broadly ends up with similar outcomes in relation to objectives,” UCL argued.
But tweaking the NZF, which resulted from years of negotiations, comes with risks, it warned. For example, changes could reduce the new system’s planned support for low-income countries, turning them against it. Fenton said compromising should not mean “abandoning the principle of justice in the maritime transition”.
UCL said the speed at which shipowners must reduce their ships’ emissions or face fees is likely to be reduced in the short-term but raised in the long-term to meet a goal of net zero emissions by mid-century.
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This was a compromise put forward by NZF-supporter Brazil. However, an analysis by the the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST) has found that this change would lead to more overall emissions than the original NZF trajectory.
UCL has warned it could incentivise liquefied natural gas as a shipping fuel over greener options, which include hydrogen-based methanol and ammonia.
Analysis by UCL and the Rocky Mountain Institute suggests that, while a slower start to the NZF would reduce transport costs in the short term, it would increase them later due to the costs involved in switching the industry over from more polluting fuel to cleaner fuel.
NZF won’t meet emissions goals
IMarEst’s analysis finds that even in its current form – the most ambitious deal on the table – the NZF will not be sufficient for shipping to meet its emissions reduction goals.
It says that only a Pacific proposal to place a levy on ships’ total emissions – rather than just those above a certain level – would meet the industry’s targets to reduce emissions 20% between 2008 and 2030, 70% by 2040 and then reach net zero “by or around, i.e. close to 2050”. This is highly unlikely to be adopted.
Additional talks will be held from November 23-27 and from November 30-December 3 before a potentially final round of official negotiations begins on December 4.
The post London talks raise hopes for green shipping deal appeared first on Climate Home News.
Climate Change
At regional summit, Pacific islands ask for COP31 support for clean energy and finance
At a key leaders’ summit in Palau, Pacific island nations burdened by worsening climate change impacts and costly fossil fuel imports called for November’s COP31 climate summit to deliver finance to help the region transition to renewable energy and build more resilient communities.
Heads of government from the 18-member Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) – which includes COP31 co-president Australia – met in Palau’s capital Koror for a week-long summit, where they demanded access to climate finance, ocean action and a regional boost for renewables at COP31.
Palau’s president Surangel Whipps Jr. said during a plenary session that the Pacific must focus on delivering climate and ocean commitments. “It will require greater regional leadership, stronger regional coordination and, above all, unity of purpose,” he said.
The meeting, which ended last Friday, was marked by the absence of some leaders – among them the heads of state of the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji, which will host a preparatory session for COP31 in October (referred to as the pre-COP31). There were also tensions over Taiwan’s participation, with China objecting to its presence as an observer.
The forum’s final declaration, published after it ended and signed by all its members, reaffirms that climate change is the “single greatest threat to the security, livelihoods and wellbeing of Pacific peoples”, and notes “the importance of a focused, high-level declaration” at the pre-COP31 to build “political momentum towards COP31”.
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Australia and Pacific islands have invited world leaders to attend the pre-COP31 gathering, which will be held in Fiji and Tuvalu from October 5 to 8. While usually a technical meeting for negotiators, the island nations aim to issue a political declaration at the gathering calling for strong outcomes in Türkiye.
Chris Bowen, Australia’s climate minister and COP31 president of negotiations, said in a speech during the Pacific forum that his country is “determined to use COP31 to progress the agenda to make it easier for countries to access the climate finance they need”.
“We won’t miss the opportunity to ensure COP31 is a Pacific COP. Not just because of the location of pre-COP but because of the agenda we are shaping through the Action Agenda at COP31,” he said.
The Action Agenda is a large portfolio of climate initiatives and coalitions uniting governments, businesses and civil society outside of the formal negotiations on everything from health to methane emissions.
Renewable energy investment plan
Announced a year ago, the island nations launched a $14-billion investment plan for a “100% Renewable Blue Pacific” at the forum in Palau. The plan lists strategic projects that would reduce the region’s high dependence on fossil fuel imports, whose soaring costs have become a major burden since the Iran war.
The projects include a $52-million programme managed by Australia to develop off-grid renewables in remote communities across the Pacific, as well as a $100-million blended finance fund aimed at supporting private-sector investments in wind and solar, among others.
Currently, some countries in the Pacific are spending up to a quarter of their GDP importing diesel to power electricity generation, according to a new report by the University of New South Wales in Australia. The investment plan launched at the forum aims to reduce these costs by adding 2.2 gigawatts of renewable generation and around 9 gigawatt hours of electricity storage.
To channel funds into the region, the plan also highlights the role of the recently established Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF), a regional fund that seeks to swiftly disburse funds to climate-vulnerable communities at the local level. Bowen said he would promote the facility to world leaders attending COP31 and “ask for their support”.
Call to transition away from fossil fuels
Separately, the forum endorsed the Belau Declaration which emphasises the need to keep the 1.5C Paris Agreement temperature goal alive. A UN report last week showed that overshooting this limit is now inevitable, but deep emissions cuts could still bring global temperatures back down by the end of the century.
Pacific nations expect to rally support for this declaration at the pre-COP, with Fiji’s climate minister Lynda Tabuya saying in a statement: “Palau is where we build the political mandate. Pre-COP is where we take it to the world.”
The political declaration also says that countries must accelerate the global transition away from fossil fuels “towards a renewable energy future”, and calls for greater recognition of the importance of ocean health in addressing climate change.
UN sets out narrow path back to 1.5C warming after inevitable overshoot
As part of the forum’s outcomes in Palau, countries also noted Tuvalu’s efforts to host the second global conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels, which will gather government representatives in April next year to follow up on this year’s inaugural conference in Santa Marta, Colombia.
Speaking to journalists at the forum, Vanuatu’s climate minister Ralph Regenvanu questioned Australia’s role in talks about phasing out fossil fuels at COP31, adding that “the very least a country like Australia should be doing is stopping future expansion, and it’s not doing that”. During the PIF, the country approved the extension of a major mine that digs and exports coal for steel-making, giving it permission to keep producing until 2055.
Rising seas trigger “development emergency”
As leaders met in one of the world’s regions most threatened by sea-level rise, UN Secretary-General António Guterres released a new report warning that rising seas are now “one of the most profound threats to populations around the world in developed and developing states alike”.
Presenting the report at UN headquarters in New York, Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development Navid Hanif said rising sea levels are not a “future risk any more” but an accelerating “development emergency” that could hinder progress in vulnerable regions like the Pacific and least developed countries.
The report warns that seas are rising “faster than at any point in recorded history”, with 2024 setting a new record of 5.9 millimetres. This has been driven by human-induced climate change mainly through a process known as thermal expansion – where rising heat causes the ocean to expand – as well as the melting of ice sheets.
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The report notes that about 1.2 billion people around the world are exposed to coastal flooding, and says some low-lying islands in Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Fiji are already facing forced relocations. Globally, rising seas could cost more than $1 trillion every year by 2050, it adds.
“We cannot stop sea level rise this century but we can determine how much worse it becomes. About half a metre of sea level rise is already locked in in this century because of warming that has already occurred, but beyond that our choices matter enormously,” Hanif told journalists.
Bill Hare, CEO of think-tank Climate Analytics, said the report was a “wake-up call” to the leaders of high-emitting countries that their failure to cut carbon emissions is “creating major risks for the future alongside the impacts we can already observe around us”.
Guterres is set to host a high-level meeting on addressing the threat of sea level rise this month during the UN General Assembly, where countries are expected to adopt a declaration that calls for stronger action, expanded access to finance and “ongoing dialogue” to tackle the issue.
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At regional summit, Pacific islands ask for COP31 support for clean energy and finance
Israel’s bombardment of Gaza during the conflict that broke out in October 2023 has wrecked progress towards adapting the enclave to climate change and left two million Gazans vulnerable to heatwaves, drought and disease, the Palestinian Authority (PA) said in a new climate plan submitted to the United Nations.
Palestine’s third nationally determined contribution (NDC), uploaded to the UN climate body’s website this week, says that while “the aggression on the Gaza Strip did not make the climate worse”, “it removed the housing, water and sanitation systems, health facilities, energy networks, roads and livelihoods through which people absorb a climate they were already struggling with.”
The 91-page document lists the types of infrastructure it says Israel has destroyed and notes how the destruction will worsen the impacts of climate change. It says the bombing of hospitals and rising hunger have make it harder for Gazans to cope with the health impacts of climate-driven heatwaves and waterborne diseases.
The destruction of water tanks, boreholes and desalination plants, meanwhile, have left Gazans struggling with the effects of water shortages and drought, while mass unemployment reduces people’s ability to afford climate-driven price rises. The erasure of most of the Strip’s homes makes it more difficult for people to avoid the sun’s increasing heat, the NDC said.
Many Gazans are now living in the ruins of collapsed buildings or in makeshift shelters and tents that offer little or no protection from high temperatures.
Palestine’s previous goals to cut emissions and adapt to climate change in Gaza, expressed in its last NDC five years ago, were based on a pre-war baseline that “no longer describes anything that exists”, the NDC says. Progress made since 2021 has now been destroyed, it adds.
Green reconstruction of Gaza
Instead of continuing to aim for these adaptation and emissions-reduction goals, the PA is now calling for the green reconstruction of Gaza. It says buildings should be constructed again in an energy-efficient manner with solar panels and served with modern water, waste and transport systems.
While the PA, controlled by the Fatah political party, continues to claim legitimate control of Gaza, the strip was effectively governed by Fatah’s rival Hamas between 2007 and the recent war. Control is now split between Israel and the political wing of Islamist militant group Hamas, after a US-backed ceasefire took effect in October 2025, although a UN-backed committee plans to take over.
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The United Nations, European Union and World Bank have jointly estimated that Gaza needs $71.4 billion of investment in the next two years to recover and build back. This process should be Palestinian-led, they said in April.
But US President Donald Trump has said the US should “take over” and “own” Gaza and redevelop it as the “Riviera of the Middle East”. Israel’s right-wing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel should control the territory with civil administration managed by Palestinians favourable to Israel.
With occupation, targets conditional
In the other part of Palestine, the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority carries out some government functions, but ultimate control rests with Israel, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
Because Israel controls planning in most of the West Bank, the NDC argues that the PA cannot pursue all the climate projects it wants. In addition, Israel restricts the movement of PA officials, making data collection difficult, and controls the West Bank’s electricity supply meaning that the PA cannot control whether it comes from dirty or clean sources of energy.
Given this situation, the NDC says that all of Palestine’s new climate targets are conditional but it will aim to reduce emissions 12.8% below a business-as-usual baseline by 2035 and 17.1% by 2040. If the Israeli occupation ends and Palestine regains full sovereignty over its land and resources, it will aim for reductions of 15.1% and 19.1% by 2035 and 2040 respectively under an “independence pathway”.
That could allow, for example, for greater electrification and reducing emissions per unit of growth, the document said.
To achieve the 2035 emissions-reduction target and adapt to the impacts of climate change, the PA says it needs $8.6 billion in total. This funding would be spent on measures like encouraging solar farms and rooftop solar and scaling up solar water heating to cover four-fifths of households. To complement the planned increase in solar power, the authority wants to modernise the electricity grid and install battery storage.
In the transport sector, it aims to promote the uptake of electric vehicles, develop bus rapid transit corridors and scrap old polluting trucks and buses. In Gaza in particular, it wants to deploy 66 electric buses when the conflict ends.
To adapt to climate-driven drought, the NDC includes initiatives to reuse wastewater through treatment plants, build desalination plants in Gaza to remove salt from seawater, and promote irrigation for farmers.
The new climate plan was prepared by Palestine’s Environment Quality Authority, with support from the United Nations Development Programme and the governments of Britain and Spain.
The United Nations recognised Palestine’s statehood in 2012 and it joined the UN’s climate convention and signed the Paris climate agreement – which requires countries to submit more ambitious NDCs every five years – in 2016.
The Israeli foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment. But in late 2024, then Israeli climate envoy Gideon Behar told Climate Home News that the war and the resulting environmental destruction in Gaza was the fault of Hamas.
The post Palestine: Israel’s bombing has left Gaza vulnerable to climate change appeared first on Climate Home News.
Palestine: Israel’s bombing has left Gaza vulnerable to climate change
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