A new policy guide unveiled at COP30 aims to encourage governments to integrate healthier and more sustainable diets into their climate and biodiversity action plans. The “Diets Toolkit: An NDCs & NBSAPs Guide for Healthy and Sustainable Diets”, created by ProVeg International, Climate Focus, and WWF, offers practical measures for governments to align food policies with global climate and health objectives. The toolkit emphasizes the importance of tailoring dietary policies to each country’s unique cultural, economic, and environmental conditions, providing a menu of policy options such as introducing more plant-based foods in public institutions and utilizing subsidies for healthy foods.

Despite the crucial role of diet in climate change mitigation and biodiversity protection, it remains underrepresented in many national climate action plans. The toolkit offers five key steps for policymakers to integrate diet-related policies into their strategies, including assessing the link between food consumption and environmental impacts, identifying priority policies for promoting sustainable diets, and monitoring progress to ensure effective policy outcomes. By shifting towards more diverse and sustainable diets, governments can trigger cascading benefits across food systems, addressing pressing global challenges like climate change, biodiversity, and nutrition and health.