G20 carbon ‘food-print’ highest in meat-loving nations
by Marlowe Hood
If everyone alive ate steaks and dairy the way Brazilians and Americans do, we would need an extra five planets to feed the world, according to the first report to compare the carbon emissions from food consumption in G20 nations, released Thursday.
Among the world’s top economies, only the per capita carbon “food-prints” in India and Indonesia are low enough to ensure the Paris climate target of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to the Diet for a Better Future report.
In China, where sustained economic growth has boosted consumption of meat and imported foods, the average diet — on a planetary scale — would exceed the 1.5C threshold by nearly two-fold.
Producing food for Earth’s 7.7 billion people is responsible for a quarter of the global carbon emissions that drive climate change.
About 40 percent of that comes from livestock production and food waste, with the rest generated by rice production, fertiliser use, land conversion and deforestation to accomodate commercial crops.
“Currently, individuals in a handful of countries are eating way too much of the wrong foods at the expense of the rest of the world,” Brent Loken, global food lead at WWF and lead author of the report, told AFP.
These imbalanced diets by a relative handful of rich countries are “to the detriment of climate, health and economies,” he said.
The report by EAT — an Oslo-based non-profit that has led peer-reviewed research on the nexus of diet, health and climate change — also rated G20 national dietary guidelines, projecting the carbon footprint they would produce if followed. (AFP)
