This progress report from the UK’s Committee on Climate Change assesses progress in reducing UK greenhouse gas emissions over the past year and makes recommendations on how to ensure the post-COVID-19 recovery is green and resilient. It includes discussions of agriculture, diets and land-use change.

This report from the Food System Impact Valuation Initiative (FoodSIVI) at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute examines how the social impacts of food systems can be reported in monetary terms. It suggests that calculating the costs and benefits of food system interventions could help direct spending towards the most effective measures.

The Global Alliance for the Future of Food held the Salzburg Process on the Climate Emergency and the Future of Food in May 2020. In this blog post, Ruth Richardson (Executive Director of the Global Alliance) reflects on lessons learned from holding the event virtually because of COVID-19, rather than physically as originally planned.

The interim report of the UK think tank Institute for Public Policy Research’s Environmental Justice Commission sets out a vision for the transformation of society and the economy. It argues that it is essential to put people at the heart of solving the climate and nature crises.

This piece in the UK’s Independent newspaper, by several researchers from the University of Oxford, sets out five questions that (they argue) should be considered by any policymaker or business setting a “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions target.

This blog post by Shefali Sharma of the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy says that agriculture and the people whose livelihoods depend on it must be core considerations in international climate negotiations. Sharma argues that proposed solutions such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and carbon credits simply allow existing industries to continue increasing their emissions.

In this debate piece, authors Pete Smith and Andrew Balmford argue that the recent development of the GWP* method of measuring the climate impact of short-lived greenhouse gases (notably methane), as opposed to the conventional GWP method, should not be used as an excuse to avoid reducing methane emissions. Read more about the differences between GWP* and GWP in the article New way to evaluate short-lived greenhouse gas emissions.

Conservation NGO WWF has released the 40-minute film “Our planet, our business”, which sets out five principles for businesses to follow in order to protect nature and their own future.

In this research note, the US-based Open Philanthropy Project discusses whether animal welfare might be helped or hindered by climate-focused reductions in meat consumption. For example, the note points out that meat types with a relatively low carbon footprint (e.g. chicken) are often from smaller animals (compared to, say, cows) and thus require more animals to be farmed and killed.