China has released a five-year plan dedicated to addressing climate change.

Recently, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, in collaboration with the National Development and Reform Commission and 18 other departments, jointly issued the “National 15th Five-Year Plan for Climate Change Response,” establishing for the first time a comprehensive, all-encompassing system of climate change response targets at the five-year planning level.

This working paper quantitatively examines the scale and climate impact of food loss and waste (FLW) in China. It analyzes the uneven distribution of FLW across supply chain stages and food types, highlighting that while vegetables account for the largest share of losses, livestock products carry disproportionately high emissions intensity. The paper reviews China's evolving policy landscape, including the Anti-Food Waste Law and cold chain development initiatives, while identifying critical gaps in data infrastructure, sustainable cold chain coverage, and consumer behavior interventions. It explores the dual role of cold chain logistics—reducing post-harvest losses while contributing significant energy-related and refrigerant emissions—and assesses the potential of business innovations, public engagement, and food waste valorization to mitigate FLW. The paper calls for integrating FLW reduction into climate governance frameworks, proposing four priority pathways: establishing systematic FLW data systems, advancing sustainable cold chain solutions, strengthening circular utilization of food waste, and promoting green consumption patterns to unlock a cost-effective, high-potential climate mitigation opportunity.

This policy brief analyzes reduction opportunities for "super pollutants" (methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, black carbon, and ground-level ozone) from China's agri-food system. It focuses on three key areas: nitrogen fertilizer use and nitrous oxide emissions, food loss and waste and associated methane emissions, and rural energy use and black carbon emissions from cooking and agricultural machinery. It synthesizes scientific literature, official statistics, and policy documents to quantify emissions, identify mitigation potential, and catalog the climate, health, economic, and social co-benefits of action. It finds that super pollutant mitigation offers "triple-win" outcomes—climate, health, and socioeconomic—and identifies three emerging opportunities: supportive national and provincial policies, expanding green finance and carbon market mechanisms, and the growing role of new agricultural business entities in driving technology adoption at scale.

This policy brief analyzes agricultural methane emissions in China. It quantifies the substantial mitigation potential through measures such as improved irrigation, adoption of low-emission rice varieties, and anaerobic digestion of livestock manure. The analysis combines national-level emission analysis, county-level spatial mapping identifying five provinces that account for one-third of total agricultural methane emissions, a systematic review of provincial methane control action plans (nine provinces as of October 2025), and case studies of on-the-ground practices in Sichuan, Yunnan, and Jiangxi. It also catalogs the multiple co-benefits of mitigation, including water savings, reduced fertilizer costs, and improved agricultural productivity.