FEBRUARY 2021
Interview with Lynette Tshabangu, WWF-Zimbabwe
How big of a problem is food loss and waste in the KAZA region? Why so?
The Kavango Zambezi (KAZA) Trans-frontier Conservation Area (TFCA) in Southern African plays a central role in nature-based tourism and economic growth, in a region that urgently needs to close the food security gap and transition its food system to become environmentally sustainable. The region’s food system is largely dependent on improving productivity and efficient food distribution and utilization, to meet the growing food demand for the local population and visitors to the region's tourism hubs, like the Victoria Falls town in Zimbabwe.
The inadequate mechanisms to reduce post-harvest losses within the local informal market system especially for horticulture produce, coupled with the increasing demand for conferencing services such as buffets within the hospitality sector, is driving food loss and waste (FLW) in the region.
The FLW is therefore a major threat to biodiversity conservation through its food footprint on natural resource waste of water, land, energy, as well as contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. As WWF in KAZA region, we therefore strongly believe that reducing FLW is essential in sustainably achieving food availability and accessibility, and conserving fragile ecosystems.
What projects is WWF running in the region to tackle these issues?
Since 2019, WWF has been implementing food waste reduction demonstration initiatives with six major hotels in the Victoria Falls town in Zimbabwe, as part of scaling up the adoption of the Hotel Kitchen Toolkit globally.
The demonstration initiative revealed that the hospitality sector is increasingly becoming alive to the rising global demand for social and environmental stewardship. However, there is limited awareness and incentives for most of the guests utilizing buffet services, especially amongst guests attending conferences. One of the participating hotels observed a 55% margin in food waste for a period with a business mix of at least 65% buffet food serving style as compared to a period with a business mix of at least 65% à la carte food serving style.
The project is currently supporting the localization of Hotel Kitchen tools across the hospitality sector within the KAZA region, and promoting the integration of food waste reduction performance indicators as part of social and environmental stewardship.
What has been the outcome of WWF’s involvement? Has consumer awareness of the issue increased? Are hotels cutting their waste?
WWF’s engagement with hospitality actors around FLW issues has stimulated a lot of interest within the hospitality sector to invest in food waste management strategies. Through the adoption of the Hotel Kitchen Toolkit, chefs are taking the lead in coming up with innovative ways of reducing food waste during food production, such as developing zero-waste menus for à la carte food serving style.
The initiative has also identified champion hotels to drive consumer awareness on FLW, which will be rolled out as a priority focus for building back better after the Covid-19 lockdown.
What challenges do you face in your work?
Issues of food loss and waste within Africa are still largely a blind spot for most actors in the food system. As such, there is limited research evidence and validated information to compel actors on the need to transform or act urgently. While adopting the Hotel Kitchen Toolkit provides a great entry point for this, there is need to build a business case that will motivate hotels to continue measuring and finding strategies to reduce food waste.
Absence of a policy framework for FLW in the region and countries within KAZA also present another challenge for creating an enabling environment to proactively address the FLW threats. While Covid-19 temporarily eliminated food loss and waste as it brought the tourism sector to a halt under lockdown conditions, continued engagement with key actors once business resumes will be key to building on the momentum that has been created.
What are the next steps for these projects?
Looking forward, WWF has already started the process of developing a strategy to reduce FLW within the nature-based tourism hubs in KAZA. The strategy is focusing on raising awareness, building strategic partnerships, and promoting investments into FLW issues, towards building a socially and environmentally sound food system.
The pandemic has obviously impacted tourism - how do you plan to keep engaging business and people on food waste, when it might be their top priority?
As highlighted earlier, we plan to identify champion hotels that have shown willingness to prioritise FLW issues in their business operations, and support them to identify innovative solutions to reduce food waste especially at consumer level. We will also make use of our regional and global reach to facilitate cross-learning and the building of a strong case on the FLW-biodiversity nexus to motivate business and people to take the necessary actions.