Project Drawdown’s new Explorer tool redefines effective climate solutions in food and agriculture

A novel data-driven tool from Project Drawdown categorises impactful climate mitigation strategies, highlighting dietary shifts, waste reduction, and sustainable farming as highly recommended actions for immediate and collective implementation.

Climate action organisation Project Drawdown has introduced an innovative Explorer tool designed to classify environmental solutions by their actual impact on climate change mitigation. This new tool supersedes its earlier Solutions library, which ranked climate fixes based on projections extending to 2050. Instead, the Explorer tool provides a real-time, data-driven assessment using up-to-date intelligence and high-quality regional information, enabling more actionable insights for policymakers, businesses, investors, philanthropists, and other stakeholders.

Unlike the previous ranking system, the Explorer does not pit individual climate solutions against each other in a hierarchical manner. Instead, it categorises solutions into four distinct groups: Highly Recommended (truly effective actions), Worthwhile (smaller or niche applications), Keep Watching (promising but not yet scalable or ready), and Not Recommended (scientifically implausible or high-risk interventions). Project Drawdown stresses the necessity of implementing almost all available solutions collectively to address climate change effectively.

The database covers over 100 solutions spanning various sectors such as buildings, electricity, transportation, carbon removal, health and education, and notably, food and agriculture, a sector responsible for about one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Among the food-based climate solutions, several stand out as highly effective.

The most impactful food-related solution identified is adopting improved diets, specifically reducing consumption of ruminant meats like beef and lamb in favour of plant-based proteins or alternative protein sources. This dietary shift alone can reduce emissions by 65 kilograms of CO2 equivalent for every kilogram of meat replaced, with a potential to mitigate 1.4 to 5.3 gigatonnes of CO2e annually. Moreover, beyond emissions reductions, this approach supports water and land conservation, enhances food security, and promotes public health benefits.

Another key Highly Recommended solution targets the reduction of food loss and waste across the supply chain. Saving each tonne of food is estimated to reduce emissions by 2.82 tonnes of CO2e, with potential global annual mitigation between 1.23 and 4.94 gigatonnes. This strategy also conserves vital land and water resources, strengthens food security, supports economic resilience, and aids in adapting to extreme weather events.

Improving nutrient management by optimising nitrogen use on croplands is another critical measure highlighted. Excessive nitrogen fertiliser application releases nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, and contributes to water pollution and soil degradation. Effective nutrient management practices reduce emissions, improve soil health, increase crop yields, and promote climate-resilient agricultural systems.

Additionally, enhancing rice production offers considerable benefits since rice paddies emit methane, another significant greenhouse gas. Techniques such as alternate wetting and drying can cut methane emissions substantially while also improving water efficiency and crop productivity, thus contributing to both climate mitigation and food security.

In the category deemed Worthwhile, Project Drawdown includes improvements in aquaculture systems, better manure management, addressing overfishing, and enhancing irrigation efficiency. Although these interventions may not lead to globally transformative emissions reductions alone, they are valuable for replacing high-emission protein sources, reducing methane emissions from manure storage, and fostering sustainable fish stocks and water use.

The Explorer tool also advises caution or patience with some emerging technologies classified as Keep Watching, including cultivated meat produced from animal cells in bioreactors, methane-reducing feed additives for livestock, selective breeding for lower methane emissions in ruminants, and preserving seafloors to protect sediment carbon stocks. These solutions show promise but currently face barriers such as limited scalability, high costs, insufficient data, and the need for further research.

Conversely, certain widely discussed climate actions receive a Not Recommended rating. Notably, the deployment of vertical farms, which cultivate crops indoors using stacked layers and controlled environments, is discouraged. Despite theoretical benefits like reduced land use and shorter food transport, these farms consume enormous amounts of energy and materials, leading to a higher carbon footprint compared with conventional farming methods, alongside elevated costs. Other solutions falling into this category include increasing livestock grazing, carbon capture and storage on fossil fuel power plants, production of blue hydrogen, and stratospheric aerosol injection, which either lack scientific plausibility or pose significant risks.

Project Drawdown’s new Explorer tool therefore offers a nuanced and evidence-based framework that helps distinguish genuinely effective climate actions from less impactful or potentially counterproductive ones, particularly within the critical food and agriculture sector. This approach underscores the multifaceted nature of climate solutions, advocating for a broad and integrated strategy that combines dietary changes, waste reduction, improved farming practices, and careful technological innovation to meet global climate goals.

📌 Reference Map:

• ^[1] (Green Queen) – Paragraphs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
• ^[2] (Drawdown – Plant Rich Diets) – Paragraph 5
• ^[3] (Drawdown – Reduce Food Loss & Waste) – Paragraph 6
• ^[4] (Drawdown – Improve Nutrient Management) – Paragraph 7
• ^[5] (Drawdown – Improve Rice Production) – Paragraph 8
• ^[7] (Drawdown – Reduce Food Loss & Waste) – Paragraph 6

Source: Fuse Wire