Every harvest season in Africa, food is lost or wasted at staggering levels. Nigeria loses 45% of its 3.9 million tons of tomato harvest each year to postharvest losses and supply chain inefficiencies. Kenya loses up to 40% of the food it produces–around 9 million tons worth KES 72 billion (approximately US$578 million)–even as one in four citizens struggles daily to find enough to eat. In South Africa, about a third of all food ends up at the dump. These are not isolated failures. They are symptoms of a global crisis. On average, one-third of all food produced never gets eaten, generating 8–10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. If food loss and waste were a country, it would be the world’s third-largest emitter.
On 29 September, the world marked the sixth International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste, a reminder that cutting waste is essential to a sustainable food future. My message is simple: we cannot fix the climate without fixing food waste. Yet today, less than 6% of public climate finance in food systems targets reducing loss and waste. We are starving the very solutions that could feed people and protect the planet. It is time to expand and align stakeholder efforts, and to channel climate finance where it matters most–into reducing food loss and waste.
Food loss and waste is not a side issue. It is a climate, nutrition, food justice, and economic issue rolled into one. We cannot afford inaction, with rice losses in sub-Saharan Africa alone exceeding $10 billion per year. In Africa, where climate shocks already slash harvests, postharvest losses rob households of income and nutrients, worsening hidden hunger in communities that can least afford it. Women, who produce and process much of our food, shoulder the heaviest burden, spending more hours salvaging spoiled crops, risking illness, or stretching scarce resources to feed their families. Youth lose out on farming and agribusiness opportunities as value literally rots away, eroding confidence in agriculture as a viable path for employment and innovation.
Climate finance is meant to build resilience. But how resilient can a food system be when 30–40% of its harvest disappears each season as the climate grows increasingly erratic? Financing cold chains, storage, transport, and waste-to-value solutions is not charity. It is climate adaptation in action. Every dollar invested in reducing food loss and waste reduction pays back at least threefold: cutting emissions, strengthening supply chains against climate shocks, and ensuring more food reaches households without clearing new land. This is one of the rare areas where climate, health, and the economy align.
The barriers are real. Climate modeling and advisory services exist but often do not reach smallholders. Governments struggle to integrate food systems into climate plans, ministries work in silos with limited capacity to design bankable projects, and many institutions lack accreditation to access global funds, while policies rarely link agriculture, nutrition, and climate. Climate finance can change this.
Dedicated funding windows in other sectors already show what is possible: the Green Climate Fund’s Readiness Programme has supported more than 140 countries to build accredited entities and prepare projects; the Adaptation Fund’s Innovation Facility has enabled bold, locally driven solutions; and the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program has demonstrated how pooled finance can reach smallholders directly. Applying these approaches to food systems can build national capacity to embed food loss and waste reduction into climate strategies; support inclusive projects that cut emissions while improving nutrition; and catalyze private sector innovation—from waste-to-value enterprises to digital logistics platforms, while ensuring women, youth, and smallholders secure a fair share of resources, voice, and leadership.
Skeptics may argue that climate finance should focus on “harder” sectors such as energy or forestry, where emission reductions are easier to measure. Ignoring food waste, however, is a false economy. We already track carbon in forests and smokestacks. Why not in wasted food? Tools exist to measure and verify reductions. What is missing is political will and financial priority. Others say infrastructure is costly. So is inaction. Every year of delay means billions lost in spoiled harvests, wasted water and land, and millions of children undernourished.
This year’s theme gets it right—climate finance must step up. Here is how: Governments should embed food loss and waste reduction in national climate strategies and investment plans. Finance windows should earmark funding for loss and waste reduction. Development partners must co-invest and coordinate in infrastructure and innovation (cold-chain, storage, transport, and data systems). The private sector should be rewarded for turning waste into value and ensuring participation and benefits for women, youth, and smallholders.
If food loss is climate loss, then financing its reduction is financing survival. The question is no longer whether we can afford to act. It is whether we can afford not to.
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