Health and Global Policy Institute (HGPI) Planetary Health Project has submitted public comments on the ‘Basic Policy on the Promotion of Food Loss and Waste Reduction (Draft)’ by the Office for Recycling Promotion, General Affairs Division, Environmental Regeneration and Material Cycles Bureau, Ministry of the Environment. The call for public comments for this draft is now closed.

The “Basic Policy on the Promotion of Food Loss and Waste Reduction” is required by the Law for Promotion of Recycling and Related Activities for the Treatment of Cyclical Food Resources to establish a basic policy every five years.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) review by the World Health Organization (WHO), the stability of food demand is linked to malnutrition, diet-related deaths and risks, deterioration in nutritional quality, reduced access to balanced food, and an increase in malnutrition due to inequality.

Additionally, the concept of the “Planetary Health Diet” was proposed in 2019 in a report by the EAT-Lancet Commission, calling for three key actions: a global shift toward planetary health diets, improved food production practices, and reductions in food loss and waste.

And the “Tokyo Compact on Nutrition for Global Growth,” compiled at the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit held on December 7-8, 2021, calls for five priority areas (health, food, resilience, financing, and data) to end malnutrition by 2030. This aligns with perspectives such as the Planetary Health Diet and highlights the importance of incorporating a “health” perspective into the circulation of food resources, which is expected to further promote the recycling of food circulation resources.

In light of this situation, HGPI submitted a public comment requesting the inclusion of a “Planetary Health Diet” perspective.

Planetary Health Project also published recommendations for NDCs in December 2024: ‘Integrating Climate and Health for a Sustainable Society: Incorporating a Planetary Health Perspective into Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)’.

For more information on this public comment, please click here (only available in Japanese).