The most important issue for 2008 should be: Meat

Last year, the UN Food and Agriculture Office published Livestock’s Long Shadow. It described a dramatic increase in consumption of meat and dairy, particularly in developing countries (see chart), and a livestock industry that has intensified into large, enclosed production units that feed animals cereal concentrates.

The data presented in the report demonstrate the continued inadequacy of international management of greenhouse gas emissions from livestock. The report’s authors calculate that livestock accounts for 18% of total human-related emissions. That is a larger contribution than the entire transport sector, including aviation. Deforestation for pasture land and the methane-producing digestive process of ruminants (which include cows, sheep and goats) are the largest sources of emissions in livestock production.

Solutions that the report presents are all on the supply side. They include accelerating intensification to avoid further deforestation, improving the diet of ruminants to reduce methane formation and using emissions trading schemes to finance these changes. This supply-side focus is not surprising: it is not really the FAO’s job to tell us how to live our lives.

But the mass membership green NGOs should have a lot more to say about it. Livestock’s Long Shadow demonstrated that consumption of livestock products is one of the biggest parts of our footprints. The key message from environmental civil society in 2008 should be: cut back on meat.