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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?

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.

Estimates of food loss and waste data show that, by weight, approximately 90% of food loss and waste in the supply chain (left) is edible (green) and 10% is inedible (brown). Approximately 70% of household (right) wasted food is edible and 30% is inedible. Source: US Environmental Protection Agency (2021).

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.

“Food recovery hierarchy” showing the most preferred (purple) to least preferred (grey) options to prevent and divert wasted food. Source: EPA (2023).
“Food recovery hierarchy” showing the most preferred (purple) to least preferred (grey) options to prevent and divert wasted food. Source: EPA (2023).

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.

Discarded white and red onions left to rot on a farm field in the Region of Lambton Shores, Southwest Ontario, Canada in 2017. Image ID: HHB4KC
Discarded white and red onions left to rot on a farm field in the Region of Lambton Shores, Southwest Ontario, Canada in 2017. Credit: Rubens Alarcon / Alamy Stock Photo.

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.

Hovis soft white thick loaf of bread with yellow best before date tag. Image ID: E2AEJW.
Hovis soft white thick loaf of bread with yellow best before date tag. Credit: ACORN 1 / Alamy Stock Photo.

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.

Compost Collection at the Greenmarket in Union Square in New York. Image ID: D9REGW.
Compost Collection at the Greenmarket in Union Square in New York. Credit: Richard Levine / Alamy Stock Photo.

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.”

Staff at a local restaurant put up signs with characters saying "Clean Plate Campaign" to urge people against food waste, Yangzhou city, east China's Jiangsu province, 21 August 2020. Image ID: 2EKE6DK.
Staff at a local restaurant put up signs with characters saying “Clean Plate Campaign” to urge people against food waste, Yangzhou city, east China’s Jiangsu province, 21 August 2020. Credit: Sipa US / Alamy Stock Photo.

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.”

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Scientists hail rapid estimate of climate change’s role in heat deaths as a first

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Ten days of extreme heat killed 2,305 people in a sample of 12 European cities last month, with almost two-thirds of those deaths caused by climate change’s intensifying effect on heatwaves, new research estimated on Wednesday.

The early summer heatwave, which sparked wildfires and health warnings from Spain to Turkey, was between 2 and 4 degrees Celsius hotter than it would have been without climate change, according to the study by the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).

“These numbers represent real people who have lost their lives in the last days due to the extreme heat”, said Imperial College London climate scientist Friederike Otto.

“If we continue to follow the wishes of the fossil fuel industry and delay serious mitigation [emissions-cutting] further, more and more people will lose their lives for the financial benefit of only a tiny rich influential minority,” she told reporters during a conference call.

Separately, a report by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said last month was the hottest June on record in Western Europe.

Otto highlighted the researchers’ rapid work in calculating the role of climate change in the overall death toll, which she hailed as a first.

Rapid attribution study

Previously, such research has taken months. A study into Europe’s 2022 heatwave, which found that climate change was responsible for just over half of the 68,000 deaths, was published a year later.

The new study has not been peer-reviewed, a sometimes lengthy process where other scientists evaluate the research, Otto said, adding that the methods it used to attribute deaths had undergone peer review and been approved.

She said publishing studies quickly is important because the immediate aftermath of a heatwave is “when people talk about it”. That is also why the researchers focused on a sample of just 12 cities, she said, making their analysis more manageable.

People hold umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun during an ongoing heat wave with temperatures reaching 40 degrees, in Rome, Italy, on July 6, 2025, at the Colosseo area. (Photo by Massimo Valicchia/NurPhoto)

Previous studies from the World Weather Attribution group, which Otto co-leads, have only estimated how much hotter climate change has made a heatwave. Otto said she wanted to translate this into numbers of additional deaths because a temperature increase of a few degrees Celsius “might not sound very much”.

Otto said the reason the first study like this was carried out in Europe is because scientists have established the relationship between heat and deaths better in Europe than elsewhere. But there are parts of southern Africa, Asia and the USA where this relationship has been established by scientists, she said, so “we will probably do this again in other parts of the world”.

But LSHTM climate professor Malcolm Mistry, warned that carrying out this kind of study across the world would be “very challenging because not every public health authority wants to give out the mortality record reports for research purposes”. This data on deaths is key to establishing how many people are killed by a certain increase in temperature.

Silent killer

The study did not attribute any individual death to climate change and heat is generally not listed on death certificates. Most people who died had health problems exacerbated by the heat, and more than half of them were aged over 85.

Construction workers use an umbrella on their boom lift to cover from the sun during a heatwave in the city center in Vienna, Austria, July 2, 2025. REUTERS/Lisa Leutner

Heatwaves are a “silent killer” because the deaths mostly take place in homes and hospitals, away from public view, and are rarely reported, said Pierre Masselot from the LSHTM.

But media reports have blamed last month’s soaring temperatures in some specific cases, such as the death of 48-year old builder who collapsed while laying concrete in 35C heat in the Italian city of Bologna, and a 53-year old woman with a heart condition who died in Palermo. Climate Home has spoken to relatives of people who died during extreme heat in Saudi Arabia and the Gaza Strip.

Otto said that too many media reports about heatwaves include photographs of children eating ice cream and happy people playing on the beach. “That’s a massive problem”, she said, although she added that more articles were now referring to the role of climate change in driving heatwaves.

The researchers behind the study said ways to cope with extreme heat included installing air conditioning, improving government heatwave warnings, planting more trees, building more parks, insulating buildings and painting roofs white.

“But at the end of the day,” said Masselot, “all these measures won’t probably be as efficient as just reducing climate change altogether [by] reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.”

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COP30 president: Transition from fossil fuels can start without climate talks

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When it comes to the most important thing to curb climate change – moving away from planet-heating fossil fuels – governments have done enough negotiating, and their focus now should be on putting what they already agreed into practice, Brazil’s COP30 president told Climate Home.

That does not require repeating language in new UN texts or even consensus among countries about how to transition from coal, oil and gas, although they could choose to design a roadmap for that energy shift at this year’s climate summit in the Amazon, André Aranha Corrêa do Lago said in an exclusive interview.

“We’ve all already decided that we’re going to transition away from fossil fuels. What can be done in the negotiations is, for example, to decide that there will be a timeline or rules for how this transition will be made – whether it will be one type of country or another, which of the fossil fuels will come first etc,” he said, speaking in Spanish on a video call from Rio de Janeiro.

The comments from Brazil’s top climate diplomat, who is vice-minister for climate, energy and environment at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, build on a proposal floated by the country’s environment minister last month in response to a question from Climate Home.

Brazil’s environment minister suggests roadmap to end fossil fuels at COP30

Speaking to journalists in London, Marina Silva said COP30 could result in a roadmap setting out what a “planned and just transition to end fossil fuels” – as agreed at the COP28 Dubai summit in 2023 – should look like.

“Perhaps we can come out of COP30 with a mandated group that can trace the roadmap for this transition,” she added.

Corrêa do Lago noted in the interview that Silva “left it open in her statement whether [a roadmap] will be something negotiated or something that will be built”, adding that “several countries” believe such a plan would first require a formal COP decision to produce one.

Brazil’s environment minister Marina Silva at a press conference in London. (Photo: Credit: Isabela Castilho / COP30 presidency)

Brazil’s environment minister Marina Silva at a press conference in London. (Photo: Credit: Isabela Castilho / COP30 presidency)

The COP30 president emphasised that while this is up to governments, “we can’t keep the world waiting for negotiations to move forward” before acting to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems.

“It’s not true that it depends on that. There’s already enough approval from countries. Individual countries can do it because implementation isn’t by consensus. Implementation is that each country does what it thinks it can do,” he explained.

The UN Secretary-General and many researchers have argued that implementing the energy transition in a “just, orderly and equitable manner” requires industrialised countries which are historically the biggest carbon polluters to move first in cutting fossil fuels, with developing countries that need to tackle poverty and a lack of energy access following later.

Brazilian officials, for example, when asked about recent auctioning of oil exploration licences have said that global demand for oil is still increasing – and there is a need to debate how to move away from this and other polluting fuels in a fair and organised way.

COP to stay in Belém despite tricky logistics

Brazil has grabbed the spotlight, for both positive and negative reasons, for deciding to hold the annual UN climate summit in the Amazon region, whose forests store massive amounts of carbon but are constantly under threat of being cut down for timber, agriculture or mining.

Corrêa do Lago said President Lula’s “original idea, the symbolism of holding [COP30] in the Amazon, remains very strong” – and he rebutted the idea that part or all of the climate conference could be moved from the Amazon city of Belém due to growing concern about a lack of suitable and affordable accommodation for the more than 50,000 delegates expected there.

The climate negotiations veteran conceded that there had been “several requests and suggestions” about shifting the main talks to bigger and more accessible cities such as Rio de Janeiro – a hotly debated topic in the Brazilian press.

“But the decision is to do it in the best possible way – that is very well, in Belém,” he said.

For the first time, the UN annual summit COP30 will be held in the Amazon, in the city of Belém. (Photo: Rafa Neddermeyer/COP30 Amazônia/PR)

For the first time, the UN annual summit COP30 will be held in the Amazon, in the city of Belém. (Photo: Rafa Neddermeyer/COP30 Amazônia/PR)

He added that a long-awaited official online platform to help participants find reasonably priced accommodation in the city is due to be launched on July 15 and he expected more apartments would be made available for rent.

At June’s mid-year talks in Bonn, African nations, small island states and the least-developed countries said they had written to the COP30 presidency warning they might not be able to attend the negotiations due to the high cost of lodgings and travel.

“Regarding the management of hotels and rooms, there has been a positive reaction from the authorities and local population,” Corrêa do Lago said. “Soon, people will realise that the situation is much better than they imagined and that they will want to come.”

This week, the COP30 team announced that construction to expand and improve the Outeiro Port Terminal – where two cruise ships will house around 6,000 delegates – would be completed by mid-October.

Pessimistic outlook for public climate finance

Another pressing issue for negotiators once they reach Belém is where to find more money for climate action in developing countries, to meet the new 2035 goal agreed in Baku last year.

After tense talks, which almost collapsed over the amount rich countries were prepared to put on the table, two key targets were set: $1.3 trillion a year from all public and private sources, including $300 billion raised by donor governments.

Developing countries wanted far more of the headline $1.3 trillion to be public money provided as grants and cheap loans. But Corrêa do Lago said this was unlikely to happen.

“We need to explain the limits of the funds, of multilateral cooperation, and where this money can really come from,” he told Climate Home.

The COP30 and COP29 presidencies are currently working on a roadmap that will outline ways to deliver $1.3 trillion annually in climate finance by 2035, with input requested from finance ministers.

UN expects climate finance roadmap to offer “clear next steps”

The COP30 president said this report – due to be published before the Belém talks – would be “independent”, without “legal value”, and would serve as a basis for further discussions among governments. He emphasised that national needs for finance will vary – and some countries will require more public funding than others depending on how they are viewed by private investors.

Still, he warned against the “huge simplification” that even the core $300-billion climate finance goal could be met entirely from public funding, “especially in the context where a wealthy country has withdrawn and other rich countries are investing in defence”.

The United States under fossil fuel-enthusiast Donald Trump has given notice it will withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement to tackle climate change and has cut off most development aid and climate funding for poorer countries.

While the US technically remains part of the Paris pact until January 2026, and has not quit the underlying UN climate convention, Corrêa do Lago said his team had yet to receive any indication of whether the US government will attend COP30.

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UN Human Rights Council fails to call out fossil fuels after decision cuts mention

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A proposal by the Marshall Islands and Colombia calling for a transition away from fossil fuels at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) failed to make it into the council’s declaration on climate change and human rights issued on Tuesday.

At a meeting in Geneva, the 47 member countries of the UNHRC held annual discussions on its annual resolution which encompasses various issues relevant to human rights, from conflicts to gender and education.

This year, the UNHRC issued a resolution on human rights and climate change, calling on countries to deliver “deep and rapid cuts in global emissions” to minimise climate change impacts. It also urges states to meet the recently adopted $300-billion-a-year climate finance goal by 2035.

On Monday, the Pacific island state and Colombia proposed an amendment calling on countries to achieve emissions cuts “by transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner”, replicating the language agreed at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.

But after closed-door negotiations, both countries removed the divisive draft proposal, clearing the way for the resolution to be adopted by consensus.

Top Latin American court upholds right to “healthy climate”, urges fossil fuel control

The Marshall Islands’ ambassador to the UN, Doreen Debrum, said during the Council session that her country “places a high premium on collaboration, dialogue and consensus – and we were willing to recognise this by withdrawing our amendment”.

“We look forward to working with all members of the Council – including our co-sponsors and the core group – to ensure this important issue continues to receive the attention it deserves,” she added.

“Frustrating” resolution

Sébastien Duyck, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), welcomed parts of the UNHRC resolution, such as a call for finance to address loss and damage from climate impacts, but said the outcome on fossil fuels was “extremely frustrating”.

“Some of the fossil fuel-producing countries are hellbent on delaying and rejecting any step that will help send political messages recognising the need to transition away from fossil fuels,” Duyck told Climate Home News. “It increases the disconnect between this resolution and the actual policies that we need to see.”

COP30 president: Transition from fossil fuels can start without climate talks

UN Special Rapporteur on Climate Change and Human Rights Elisa Morgera said “we can’t talk about protecting human rights from climate change without talking about – and taking urgent action on – phasing out fossil fuels.”

Morgera recently presented a report to the UNHRC about the need to decarbonise economies in order to meet international human rights obligations. The report says the fossil fuel phase-out “should be understood as an important precondition for the right to development and the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment”.

Since the adoption of the Dubai deal in 2023, governments have struggled to repeat explicit mentions to the fossil fuel transition in texts adopted by other international summits. Last year, at COP29 in Baku, Saudi Arabia opposed all mentions to fossil fuels in the conference decisions.

Still, for Duyck, the UNHRC debate shows there is growing pressure from governments to call out fossil fuel production at international talks. “This is really becoming a topic in itself. Some countries are no longer willing to keep their head in the sand,” he added.

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