Inspired by the session “Shifting Paradigms: Addressing Organic Waste and Food Loss for a Greener Future” at GGGWeek 2025 Seoul, 27 October — GGGI Headquarters, Global Green Growth Week
Around the world, mountains of food are grown, transported, processed, purchased, and discarded. The consequences are no longer invisible. Organic waste has become one of the most significant and under-addressed sources of greenhouse gas emissions, a pressure points where environmental sustainability, food security and public health converge. It is also closely linked to livelihoods and human development, as each lost tonne of food represents foregone income for producers and missed opportunities to improve nutrition and wellbeing.
Opening the session, Jaeseung (Jason) Lee, Deputy Regional Director for Asia, Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), underscored the scale of the challenge. Food systems now account for roughly one-third of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and methane from organic waste alone represents nearly 60 percent of non-CO₂ gases emissions. Each year, an estimated 1.3 billion tonnes of food is lost or wasted—translating to 8–10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
“If food waste was a country,” Lee noted, “it would rank as the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world.”
Yet the issue is not only climate. Organic waste disrupts municipal waste systems, complicates resource recovery, accelerates land degradation, increases vector-borne disease risks, and erodes the resilience of communities already vulnerable to food price volatility. Despite this, food loss and waste remain marginal in most national strategies and nationally determined contributions (NDC) implementation plans. The session therefore centered on a critical reframing: organic waste is not simply a disposal problem—it is a resource streams management opportunity with economic, environmental and social value at stake.
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Food Loss as a Climate and Development Imperative
The keynote was delivered by H.E. Ambassador Berik Aryn, Director General of the Islamic Organization for Food Security (IOFS). He framed food loss and waste as a multidimensional challenge closely linked to environmental sustainability, food security, economic development, and human dignity. Across the 57 Member States of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), 176 million people remain undernourished, large quantities of edible food being lost before reaching markets and consumers. “When we talk about food loss and waste,” he observed, “we are talking about wasted farmer labor, wasted resources, and wasted potential for rural prosperity.”
He pointed to systemic constraints, including limited post-harvest storage and cold chain capacity, fragmented policy frameworks that classify waste primarily as an environmental issue rather than as an integral part of food security strategies, and insufficient financing and technical capacity for implementation at the local level. Yet he emphasized that progress is both possible and underway. IOFS and the Arab Organization for Agricultural Development are jointly supporting national reduction strategies, while Saudi Arabia’s national program on food lost and waste demonstrates how national targets, awareness campaigns and community engagement can drive measurable change. Here, South–South cooperation and regional platforms could help scale such solutions, supporting Member States in advancing both climate action and the objective of reducing hunger and malnutrition. Collaboration bringing together governments, private sector, research institutions and civil society is vital to develop coordinated policies and practical solutions.
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Understanding Root Causes and Designing Systemic Solutions
To understand why so much food is lost before it ever reaches consumers, it is necessary to look beyond the symptoms and examine the system itself. Building on the keynote’s framing, Thidalath Vongsayalath, Program Officer at GGGI Lao PDR, outlined the climate, economic and social implications of organic waste. Food waste contributes to approximately one quarter of waste-sector emissions, with methane emissions from landfilled organics accounting for 20 percent of global releases. At the same time, the value of food lost annually is estimated at up to USD 2.6 trillion. “The tragedy,” she noted, “is that food wasted each year could feed 1.26 billion people, more than the population suffering from hunger.” Even a partial reduction in food loss could make a decisive contribution to global efforts to reduce hunger, positioning food systems interventions as a bridge between climate objectives and social outcomes.
As time goes by, these losses accumulate across the supply chain. Climate shocks, inadequate harvesting practices, and market fluctuations contribute to supply or demand mismatch. Post-harvest losses intensify where processing and aggregation infrastructure are limited, particularly in developing economies. At the governance level, responsibilities are fragmented across ministries, and very few countries include food loss and waste in their NDCs.
Her example from Lao PDR illustrated how integrated action can contribute to a better practice. A municipal organic waste treatment facility piloted in 2019 processed 1,200 tonnes of organic waste into 50 tonnes of compost, and with KOICA support, the system is now being expanded to 26 tonnes per day, incorporating innovations such as bio digestion and black soldier flies. “The technology and models are available,” she concluded. “By combining efficient farm-to-market logistics with circular economy solution, we can reduce emissions, save money, and feed for more people.”
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Strategic Reflections: Governance, Measurement and Institutional Responsibility
As the conversation shifted toward systems-level change, the panel discussion, featuring Alebachew Azezew Belete from the Ministry of Water and Energy of Ethiopia, Lei Wang from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) International Environmental Technology Centre (IETC), Ismail Abdelhamid from IOFS, and Ankit Bhatt from GGGI, examined how policy and operational frameworks can translate evidence into implementation.
To begin, it is important to recognize that effective action often depends on fundamental systems that allow countries to identify losses, coordinate stakeholders, and establish incentives for recovery and redistribution. These elements form the basis upon which more advanced measures can be built. Belete first emphasized the need for national reduction targets and formal food recovery and redistribution systems. Drawing on Ethiopia’s experience with the waste-to-energy plant in Addis Ababa, source separation with organic waste recycling, incentives for circular food systems and green enterprises, and integration of organic waste with climate and energy sectors were also emphasized. He noted that efficiency and sustainability depend on capacity and knowledge, urging establishment of national food loss monitoring and knowledge platform.
In addition to these foundational requirements, it is important to recognize the role that measurement frameworks and global reporting systems play in shaping national priorities and guiding resource allocation. Such measurement frameworks are also critical for understanding where losses and waste occur along the chain—from upstream production and post-harvest stages to household and retail levels—and for designing behavior change and source segregation measures that respond to those patterns. From UNEP’s perspective, Wang highlighted UNEP’s custodianship of SDG 12.3 with Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Food Waste Index for comprehensive assessment of available national and global food waste data, and the need to integrate food loss and waste into NDCs and national plans, noting significant data and reporting gaps. She introduced the forthcoming Food Waste Breakthrough Initiative to be launched at COP30, which aims to halve food waste and eliminate landfilling of organics, potentially reducing global methane emissions by up to 7 percent. The Japan’s Food Recycling Law—which mandates reporting by companies producing over 100 tonnes of food waste annually—represented an example of how regulation and transparency can shift market behavior.
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It is also essential to consider the physical and logistical conditions that determine whether food can flow safely through the value chain. Strong policy commitments rely on adequate infrastructure to prevent avoidable losses during storage, transport, and processing. Abdelhamid stressed the importance of post-harvest infrastructure, including cold storage, ventilated drying facilities, and safe transportation. He added that over 60 percent of agricultural labor in Africa is carried out by women, and reducing labor intensity in food handling is therefore also a gender equality and livelihoods priority. Investments in such infrastructure, combined with local processing hubs and valorisation of organic waste into compost, bioenergy or feed, can therefore generate jobs, reduce drudgery—particularly for women—and create viable business models around waste prevention and resource recovery.
Notably, sustained progress depends on institutional clarity. Even with strong data systems and infrastructure in place, implementation can stall when responsibilities are dispersed or undefined. Clear mandates help ensure that food loss and waste are addressed consistently across sectors and administrative levels. Ankit emphasized the need to assign clear institutional responsibility for food loss and waste management. “Someone needs to be allocated that job within the government” he stated. He argued that while national policy sets out the framework, coordination and implementation are most effective at provincial and regional levels, where food systems operate. Policy approaches need to distinguish between food loss, which is often more pronounced in developing country contexts along upstream value chains, and food waste, which is typically more prevalent at the retail and household level in higher-income settings.
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Closing Synthesis
The discussion converged on a shared view that food loss and waste are structural challenges that require systemic solutions. The technologies and models already exist. What determines outcomes is governance design, capacity building, and the political prioritization of the issue.
Recognizing food loss and waste as a climate and development priority, integrating it into national planning, strengthening post-harvest systems, and establishing clear institutional mandates emerged as core conditions for progress, alongside behavior change, attention to gender and livelihoods, and enhanced cooperation across regions and sectors. The panelists jointly articulated the below list of priorities that could help address this issue:
Recognise and mainstream food loss and waste in NDC and other climate commitments
Design and set up an institutional framework around food loss and waste
Standardise FLW measurement and reporting systems including MRV frameworks
Setup clear targets and indicators across the value chain
Undertake national / regional level FLW programs to bring about fundamental changes in the way food is managed, stored, transported and traded
Invest in food recovery and recirculation systems
Implement source segregation in urban areas and ensure that organic waste is processed / stabilised before reaching landfills.
Invest in infrastructure to reduce on-farm and post-harvest food losses.
The session’s through-line was clear. Reducing organic waste is not merely a waste management concern—it is a climate mitigation strategy, a food security necessity, and a pathway to more inclusive and resilient green economies.
