Malnutrition in all its forms is the leading cause of poor health globally and climate change is and will continue to compound these and the associated burdens of disease [1]. The food systems that are failing to address rising health disorders are driving emissions and simultaneously being affecting by the climate crisis, thus, the 2021 Food Systems Summit (FSS) has an obligation to address the converging issues of climate change and human health. International, regional, national and local platforms for aligning environmental and health advocates is an innovation that can make substantial impact towards the first action track of the FSS, which is to ‘ensure access to safe and nutritious food for all’.
The creation of integrated platforms for environmental and health professionals will simulate the merging of knowledge and tools while advancing more widespread education and advocacy on the impacts of malnutrition from failing food systems and the urgency of addressing climate change through this lens. Environ-health alliances have the potential of garnering greater support from civil society and governments alike by bringing in actors from different disciplines and sectors to unite under the goal of better health through climate action, while also leading progress towards human rights and economic recovery. Farmers, health care workers, researchers, activists and other stakeholders joining forces will uplift common goals and bring about collaboration in addressing shared systemic causes. This systematic, multi sectoral approach will be better equipped to prepare synergetic solutions that minimize trade-offs and unexpected consequences than if the issue of access to nutritious and safe food is approached on separate fronts.
One major trajectory that these alliances should target, notably in high-income developed countries, is the demand to reroute agriculture and fossil fuel subsidies towards regenerative agriculture and renewable energy systems. The advocacy from these platforms could serve as a powerful voice that calls on the realigning of taxpayer dollars towards systems that do not deplete human and planetary health, which would have immediate positive effects on human health, while also freeing up billions towards equitable food access.
However, this has been and will not be an easy feat, as the corporate and big farm powers that are influencing weak and complacent governing systems to continue to blame inaction on lack of funds, infrastructure or any other seemingly convincing barriers, have a tight grip on their control. This tight grip will require the mobilization of advocates from converging fields, such as the environ-health alliances, to come together to demand accountability for climate and health justice.
The Paris Agreement is reduced to niceties and perfunctory statements if continuing support and protection for the greatest sources of emissions causing anthropogenic climate change are not removed. Emissions are not only rising, they are being encouraged via protection against environmental regulation and payments from subsidization, in turn, the fossil fuel industry operates under a fully legal basis and through taxpayer dollars while it fuels the climate and health syndemic [2].
According to Lancet’s publication on “The Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change”, fuel and food industries receive over $5 trillion in annual subsidies from governments worldwide, in which, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), fossil fuels account for 85% of all global subsidies. Imagine the reach this money could have towards contributing to ending malnutrition, which is in favour of all humanity, while subsidies for destructive industries are only in favour of short term profits for the very few. Leaders of the world from high-income, fossil fuel intensive countries driven by consumptogenic economic systems can no longer pretend that there is not enough money or resources to address climate change and the global burdens of disease associated with malnutrition.
In addition to the tackling of large scale animal agriculture in high income countries and fossil fuel industries, wealth concentration and billionaire socialism, as observed with the bail-outs, tax cuts and rising billionaire wealth during a pandemic when millions of people are losing their jobs, health and livelihoods, need to be addressed with vigour.
The environ-health alliances will be equipped to display not only the human health costs associated with climate change and failing food systems, but how failing to address them only incurs greater economic costs if ignored. In terms of savings, the IMF reports that “efficient fossil fuel pricing in 2015 would have lowered global carbon emissions by 28 percent and fossil fuel air pollution deaths by 46 percent, and increased government revenue by 3.8 percent of GDP”. Food systems wise, $12 trillion is accumulated in hidden costs from the health, environment and economic costs of global food and land use systems, in which only $10 trillion of that is generated through market value, leaving $2 trillion lost to the economy, poor human health, broken livelihoods and degraded ecosystems. In terms of the real costs of ill health, such as the current costs of obesity, which are being paid for directly and indirectly through these subsidies, they are incurring economic costs of $2 trillion annually from direct health-care costs and lost economic productivity, which represents 2-8% of the world’s GDP [1].
The sooner that action is enabled, the sooner the economy can address its gaps and more importantly the greater chance is that more people will have access to safe and nutritious food. This will require dedicated task forces from international to local platforms that understand the health and climate aspects that are in the way of reaching action track 1.
The current public enemy, SARS-CoV-2, brings daily lessons that are being learned along the spread of this infectious disease, which are that inaction and inability to cooperate makes matters worse, and affects the most vulnerable of our societies. The spread of zoonotic diseases is related to health and climate change on this scale, but also in the regard that tackling and preventing pandemics will also require the collaboration of climate and health advocates.
Health and climate action must be oriented together, as we cannot sacrifice health goals while pursuing climate goals. Rerouting the money from those who are fuelling the intertwined health and climate crisis will help invest in better health care systems, education, food systems transitions, research and development and most relevant to this action track—ensuring access to nutritious and safe food, for all. The aligned climate-health platform will enable a greater ability to pierce through governance and civil society with the clear and urgent message that climate change is a health crisis, and that ignoring to frame it as such delays saving lives.
This cannot be achieved without accountability and governments need to realize and reverse their complicit role in the health of people now and into the future, otherwise inaction will be a difficult path to explain to future generations where access to nutritious and safe food is out of reach for many of the projected 9 billion people that will be living on growingly uninhabitable and degraded land.
For interventions to be successful at scale and for long term they must change institutional arrangements, and one such institution are governments, who must resume the roles of being accountable for feeding populations safe, healthy and nutritious foods—this is not to be left solely to individual action and choice, which is heavily influenced by obesogenic environments or through the many and growing barriers to food access and nutrition accelerated through climate change and most prevalent in already vulnerable populations.
Environmental and health movements need to meet under shared goals and work together to tackle the crisis of subsidization. There needs to be an end to silos between health and environmental communities in tackling the greatest global risks. The climate and health crisis require coordination and multi-sectoral action via the creation of platforms for collaboration against common systemic drivers and towards better futures where all people, everywhere, have access to nutritious food and healthy lives.
