Climate Change and Animal Agriculture:
This report presents information from a range of sources primarily the IPCC, FAO, and UNDP and a selection of peer reviewed research papers. It explains why eliminating animal agriculture together with the reforestation on the freed up grazing lands are key initiatives for reversing climate change. The report is divided into four parts.
The Story of Soy:
This report presents information from a range of sources primarily the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, Mighty Earth and Rainforest Foundation Norway, FERN and Chatham House. It describes the scale of soy production and how it is driven by animal agriculture. It also highlights the biodiversity and human impacts. The report is divided into three parts.
Living Planet Report 2020 – by WWF:
The 2020 global Living Planet Index shows an average 68% fall in monitored populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish between 1970 and 2016. Habitat loss mostly due to agriculture, together with exploitation from fishing and hunting are responsible for 70 – 81% of all biodiversity loss.
More Reports:
2020:
- Food and Pandemics Report – ProVeg International – 2020. The report presents the connection between our dietary choices and the global food system, and zoonoses like COVID-19 – i.e. diseases which are transmitted from non-human animals to humans, which make up about 75 percent of all emerging infectious diseases. It reveals the three ways our diet and food system drive zoonotic diseases through the destruction of animals’ natural habitats and loss of biodiversity, driven largely by animal agriculture, through the use of wild animals as food, and through the use of farmed animals as food in intensified animal agriculture.
- Farming for Failure – Report by Greenpeace – 2020. New calculations based on UN FAO data and other peer-reviewed research finds that greenhouse gas emissions from animal farming in the EU account for 17% of the EU’s total emissions, the equivalent of 704 million tonnes of CO2, more than all cars and vans put together. The analysis also shows the scale of possible emissions reductions, where a 50% reduction in animal farming would save the equivalent of 250 million tonnes of CO2 – the combined emissions, from all sectors, of the 11 lower emitting EU countries.
- The Carbon Opportunity Cost of Animal-Sourced Food Production on Land – 2020. According to the authors’ findings, vegetation regrowth could remove as much as nine to 16 years of global fossil fuel CO2 emissions, if demand for meat were to drastically plummet in the coming decades along with its massive land requirements. That much CO2 removal would effectively double Earth’s rapidly shrinking carbon budget. The paper is behind a paywall but you can read an article here.
- Forest Regeneration on European Sheep Pasture is an economically viable climate change mitigation strategy – 2020
2019:
- Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems – Lancet Report – 2019
- Envirocidal: How Livestock Farming is Killing the Planet – Viva (2019)
- Climate and Health Benefits of a UK Vegan Agriculture System – Harvard Law School (2019): Eating Away at Climate Change with Negative Emissions
- Global Assessment of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services – IPBES (2019)
- World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency – 2019
2018:
- Reducing Food’s Environmental Impacts through Producers and Consumers – Poore & Nemecek – 2020. “Moving from current diets to a diet that excludes animal products (table S13) (35) has transformative potential, reducing food’s land use by 3.1 (2.8 to 3.3) billion ha (a 76% reduction), including a 19% reduction in arable land; food’s GHG emissions by 6.6 (5.5 to 7.4) billion metric tons of CO2eq (a 49% reduction); acidification by 50% (45 to 54%); eutrophication by 49% (37 to 56%); and scarcity-weighted freshwater withdrawals by 19% (−5 to 32%) for a 2010 reference year.”
- Greenpeace calls for decrease in meat and dairy production and consumption
- Options for keeping the Food System within Environmental Limits
- IPCC Special Report on Global Warming (Oct. 2018)
- Growing the Good – by the Changing Markets Foundation – 2018
2016-17:
- Grazed and Confused – by the Food Climate Research Network (FCRN)
- Beef and the Paris Agreement: Changing what we eat to stop causing climate change
2006 – 2015:
- Livestock – Climate Change’s Forgotten Sector
- Livestock and Climate Change (Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang for ‘World Watch’)
- Livestock’s Long Shadow (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN – 2006)