Lesser consumption of animal products is necessary to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change, UN report says
Felicity Carus guardian.co.uk 2 Jun 10;
A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today.
As the global population surges towards a predicted 9.1 billion people by 2050, western tastes for diets rich in meat and dairy products are unsustainable, says the report from United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management.
It says: "Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth increasing consumption of animal products. Unlike fossil fuels, it is difficult to look for alternatives: people have to eat. A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."
Professor Edgar Hertwich, the lead author of the report, said: "Animal products cause more damage than [producing] construction minerals such as sand or cement, plastics or metals. Biomass and crops for animals are as damaging as [burning] fossil fuels."
The recommendation follows advice last year that a vegetarian diet was better for the planet from Lord Nicholas Stern, former adviser to the Labour government on the economics of climate change. Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has also urged people to observe one meat-free day a week to curb carbon emissions.
The panel of experts ranked products, resources, economic activities and transport according to their environmental impacts. Agriculture was on a par with fossil fuel consumption because both rise rapidly with increased economic growth, they said.
Ernst von Weizsaecker, an environmental scientist who co-chaired the panel, said: "Rising affluence is triggering a shift in diets towards meat and dairy products - livestock now consumes much of the world's crops and by inference a great deal of freshwater, fertilisers and pesticides."
Both energy and agriculture need to be "decoupled" from economic growth because environmental impacts rise roughly 80% with a doubling of income, the report found.
Achim Steiner, the UN under-secretary general and executive director of the UNEP, said: "Decoupling growth from environmental degradation is the number one challenge facing governments in a world of rising numbers of people, rising incomes, rising consumption demands and the persistent challenge of poverty alleviation."
The panel, which drew on numerous studies including the Millennium ecosystem assessment, cites the following pressures on the environment as priorities for governments around the world: climate change, habitat change, wasteful use of nitrogen and phosphorus in fertilisers, over-exploitation of fisheries, forests and other resources, invasive species, unsafe drinking water and sanitation, lead exposure, urban air pollution and occupational exposure to particulate matter.
Agriculture, particularly meat and dairy products, accounts for 70% of global freshwater consumption, 38% of the total land use and 19% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, says the report, which has been launched to coincide with UN World Environment day on Saturday.
Last year the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation said that food production would have to increase globally by 70% by 2050 to feed the world's surging population. The panel says that efficiency gains in agriculture will be overwhelmed by the expected population growth.
Prof Hertwich, who is also the director of the industrial ecology programme at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, said that developing countries – where much of this population growth will take place – must not follow the western world's pattern of increasing consumption: "Developing countries should not follow our model. But it's up to us to develop the technologies in, say, renewable energy or irrigation methods."
Go Veggie, Cut Fossil Fuels To Aid Planet: Study
Alister Doyle PlanetArk 3 Jun 10;
An overhaul of world farming and more vegetarianism should be top priorities to protect the environment, along with curbs on fossil fuel use, a U.N.-backed study said on Wednesday.
The report said food production and fossil fuel use caused pollution, greenhouse gases, diseases and forest destruction.
"How the world is fed and fueled will in large part define development in the 21st century," said the 112-page report by the International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management.
"Agricultural production accounts for a staggering 70 percent of the global freshwater consumption, 38 percent of the total land use and 14 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions," said Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Programme.
The report said consumers could help by cutting down on meat consumption and use of fossil fuels in heating or travel. "Animal products are important because more than half of the world's crops are used to feed animals, not people," it said.
"A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."
Researchers said it was no surprise fossil fuels were a top concern.
"More surprising was food production -- agriculture, fishing and pasture," Edgar Hertwich, lead author at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, told Reuters.
Reform "will be a titanic task, but one that is essential for our future prosperity and quality of life," Janez Potocnik, European Environment Commissioner, said in a statement.
Increasing wealth in developing nations could mean more damage, such as more demand for meat.
"Meat consumption per capita in China rose by 42 percent over eight years from 1995 to 2003," said Sangwon Suh of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
The study also said that the world should focus on improving use of materials such as plastics, iron, steel and aluminum.
Janet Salem of UNEP said the report should remind people in urban areas that clearance of distant forests -- making way for farmland and destroying habitats of animals and plants -- could be traced to their choice of food in supermarkets.
"Faraway environmental impacts are related to people in cities," she said.
Read more!
Posts
visitors since Nov 07