Imagine a menu at the world’s biggest climate conference that not only satisfies your taste buds, but also helps fight climate change. This is more than just food – it’s a step towards a greener and sustainable future. The moment of real change and a shift towards climate-friendly catering at COP is here.
Over the past three and a half years, the Food@COP campaign, a youth-led initiative under YOUNGO’s Food and Agriculture working group, has been at the forefront of advocating for climate-friendly food at major climate conferences. We have been calling on host country organizers to provide catering menus featuring climate-friendly food at the COP meetings, to reflect the urgency of the climate crisis and set a precedent for putting food systems transformation on the menu. We encouraged them to ‘walk the talk’ in our first letter to the COP26 Presidency in 2020 and 2021, with continued advocacy in 2022 encouraging the COP27 Presidency to improve upon the 40% plant-based options available at COP26 and put traditional African vegetables on the menu.
This year, the Food@COP campaign is again leading the charge in championing climate-friendly catering at COP28. On Earth Day (22 April), Food@COP and YOUNGO’s Food and Agriculture working group sent a letter to the COP28 Presidency, strongly urging the leadership and event organizers to serve affordable, nutritious, predominantly plant-based, and culturally inclusive foods at the Dubai conference. We were pleased to have support from ProVeg International this year, who provided additional capacity to this effort.
This year’s campaign brought together over 160 youth and civil society organizations who endorsed this letter to the COP28 Presidency. They encouraged all food options, especially plant-based items, to be affordable, nutritious, regionally sourced (where feasible), and culturally inclusive, with clear emissions labeling.
Since then, what have we been up to?
May and June
On May 17, we were pleased to receive an official response from the COP28 President H.E. Dr. Al Jaber, expressing equal interest in aligning the conference’s food with climate goals. He assured the global youth groups that a high percentage of the catering at COP28 will be climate-friendly, plant-based foods that are affordable, nutritious, and locally and regionally sourced, with clear emissions labeling. This was truly encouraging.
Food@COP has since promoted further engagement on this campaign through virtual platforms and in-person activities.
On May 27-29, our contact point, Sharon Gakii, joined the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA)’s 1st Africa Youth Summit on Food Systems held in Machakos County, Kenya, where she presented the letter and campaign. The conference produced an African youth statement on the transition to agroecology for healthy and sustainable food systems.
Following the positive response from the COP28 Presidency, members of YOUNGO’s Food & Agriculture WG, Food@COP campaign, and ProVeg International had the opportunity to meet with the COP28 Presidency representatives, Anca Westley (Director of Event Strategy and Sponsorship) and Helen Wright (Event Strategy and Management Operations Manager) at the Bonn Climate Change Conference on June 10.
During this engagement, our team highlighted key points that the COP28 Presidency catering and sustainability representatives could embrace to ensure the objectives of the campaign are met. Sharon Gakii suggested the need for collaboration with forward-thinking local businesses like Thryve Foods, a plant-based meat company based in Dubai (in fact, the UAE’s Minister of Climate Change and the Environment H.E. Mariam Almheiri made supportive remarks at the company’s factory opening earlier this year). Furthermore, we expressed our willingness to support the COP28 Presidency team in overcoming any financial hurdles as part of the implementation process.
The representatives, in addressing our team, made it known that a catering strategy has been drafted through the consultation of certain key stakeholders, which would be shared with us in due time. They indicated that their menus are meant to be 1.5° Celsius compatible and aim to have carbon emission and water labels. Additionally, they requested that we share with them ideas for the term ‘affordable’ and invited us to share a PowerPoint presentation on our main asks.
On June 14, Sharon Gakii and previous Food@COP contact point Rahmina Paullete, with support from Falk Hemsing and Lana Weidgenant, fellow YOUNGO and Catering Letter Steering Committee members and ProVeg International representatives, delivered the intervention on behalf of YOUNGO during the agriculture negotiations, emphasizing the need to transform our food systems and promote climate-friendly foods.
July and August
YOUNGO and Food@COP, supported by ProVeg International, made an official joint press release on July 18 sharing the official letter response signed by Dr. Sultan Al Jaber. This joint release highlighted the continuous constructive engagements between our team and that of the host country about sustainable catering. Furthermore, we included quotes from some of our Catering Letter Steering Committee leaders expressing their optimism in reaching this milestone.
Following up on our bilateral engagement with the COP28 representatives on June 10, the Food@COP campaign reached out to experts and researchers from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), including the co-authors of the ‘Cost and Affordability of Healthy Diets’ report and members of the FAO Statistics Division (ESS) in July. The purpose of these engagements was to gain an in-depth understanding of the factors to consider when pricing food items and any methodologies to ensure a fair catering pricing structure.
We also consulted the YOUNGO network, getting input from young people from different countries on what affordability means to them. Alongside, we reached out to Klimato to recommend the emissions standards for food served at COP28. After these and other consultations (more below), we consolidated all our findings.
On August 3, we made a presentation to the COP28 Food team including the Catering Manager, Sustainability Lead, Operations and Guest Services, and Sustainability Specialist. The presentation covered the recommended pricing standard based on FAO’s canteen, what affordability means to young people, science-based emissions standards, and suggestions on partners the COP28 Food team could collaborate with on this agenda. This was yet another significant milestone in our campaign for climate-friendly food at COP28.
Additional Engagements and Collaborators:
Before and after our presentation to members from the COP28 team, we also reached out out to several other advisors and stakeholders:
- Klimato – an environmental services startup that worked with the COP26 Presidency on their climate menu labels
- FAO Nutrition, Catering & Facilities departments – individuals that designed the pricing model for the Rome-based organization’s canteen
- FAO International Year of Millets – the IYM Secretariat and Steering Committee raise awareness of the nutritional, health, and environmental benefits of millets
- Greener Food – Middle-East based and tailored food consultancy that promotes sustainable menu designs for companies, businesses in the hospitality sector, events and more
- Thryve Foods – the brand behind the first plant-based meat factory in the Middle East (in Dubai)
- Switch Foods – UAE-based food tech startup that recently opened the first plant-based meat facility in Abu Dhabi
- Paul Newnham from the SDG2 Advocacy Hub and Beans is How campaign, in coordinating work around advising COP28 catering
To Be Continued…
Stay tuned for further updates, we will meet again with members from the COP28 Presidency soon!