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201214Apr09:54

50 per­cent reduc­tion in meat con­sump­tion and N2O emis­sions needed !

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 14 April 2012 | mod­i­fied 03 Decem­ber 2012
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Meat con­sump­tion in the devel­oped world needs to be cut by 50 per­cent per per­son by 2050, and emis­sions in all sec­tors — indus­trial and agri­cul­tural — need to be reduced by 50 per­cent if we are to meet the most aggres­sive strat­egy, set out by the Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Panel on Cli­mate Change (IPCC), to reduce the most potent of green­house gases, nitrous oxide (N2O).

The find­ings are results of a study by Dr. Eric David­son and were pub­lished recently in IOP Publishing’s Envi­ron­men­tal Research Let­ters. Dr. David­son, who is Pres­i­dent and a Senior Sci­en­tist at the Woods Hold Research Cen­ter in Mass­a­chu­setts, demon­strates the mag­ni­tude of changes needed to sta­bi­lize N2O con­cen­tra­tions in the atmosphere. Slaughterhouse x

N2O is the third high­est con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change behind car­bon diox­ide (CO2) and methane (CH4); how­ever, it poses a greater chal­lenge for mit­i­ga­tion since nitro­gen is an essen­tial ele­ment for food pro­duc­tion. It is also the most potent of these three green­house gases, as it is a much bet­ter absorber of infrared radi­a­tion. But total anthro­pogenic emis­sions are about 6 mil­lion met­ric tons of nitro­gen as N2O, com­pared to 10 bil­lion met­ric tons of car­bon as CO2.

The main sources of N2O in the atmos­phere are due to the spread­ing of syn­thetic nitro­gen fer­til­iz­ers onto agri­cul­tural soils and the use and stor­age of live­stock manure. The nitro­gen con­tained in fer­til­iz­ers and manure is bro­ken down by microbes that live in the soil and released into the atmos­phere as N2O. In order to reduce emis­sions, it will be nec­es­sary to apply cer­tain changes to the food pro­duc­tion process.

Dr. David­son believes that this can be achieved through improved man­age­ment of fer­til­izer and manure sources, as well as through reduc­tion of the devel­oped world’s per capita meat con­sump­tion that will relieve pres­sure on fer­til­izer demand and reduce growth in the amount of manure being pro­duced. Tech­nolo­gies exist to achieve such improved effi­cien­cies, but over­com­ing social, eco­nomic, and polit­i­cal imped­i­ments for their adop­tion and for changes in dietary habits will present large challenges.

In a draft of the IPCC’s Fifth Assess­ment Report, four sce­nar­ios, known as rep­re­sen­ta­tive con­cen­tra­tion path­ways (RCPs), have been adopted, and these rep­re­sent pos­si­ble means of reduc­tions for a num­ber of green­house gases. Dr. David­son eval­u­ated the scale of changes needed to meet the pre­dicted N2O path­ways. Three of the IPCC’s less aggres­sive sce­nar­ios could be met by reduc­ing meat con­sump­tion, improv­ing agri­cul­tural prac­tices, or reduc­ing emis­sions from indus­try. The most aggres­sive sce­nario, where atmos­pheric N2O con­cen­tra­tions sta­bi­lize by 2050, can only be met if a 50 per­cent reduc­tion, or improve­ment, is achieved for each of the above.

To make these cal­cu­la­tions, Dr. David­son relied on data pro­vided by the Food and Agri­cul­tural Orga­ni­za­tion, which assume that the global pop­u­la­tion will increase to 8.9 bil­lion by 2050 and the daily calorific intake per capita will increase to 3130 kcal. They also assume that the aver­age meat con­sump­tion of each per­son in the devel­oped world will rise from 78 kg per year in 2002 to 89 kg per year in 2030 and from 28 kg per year in 2002 to 37 kg per year for each per­son in the devel­op­ing world.

Assess­ing the like­li­hood of reduc­ing meat con­sump­tion in the devel­oped world by 50 per­cent, David­son said:

If you had asked me 30 years ago if smok­ing would be banned in bars, I would have laughed and said that would be impos­si­ble in my life­time, and yet it has come true. Sim­i­larly, there would be ben­e­fi­cial health ben­e­fits for most Amer­i­cans and west­ern Euro­peans to stop ‘super­siz­ing’ and rather to reduce por­tion sizes of red meat.

Are such changes pos­si­ble for diet? “That will depend,” says David­son, “not only on edu­ca­tion about diet, but also on prices of meat. Some agri­cul­tural econ­o­mists think that the price of meat is going to go way up, so that per capita con­sump­tion will go down, but those are highly uncer­tain projections.”

The above news item is reprinted from mate­ri­als avail­able at Woods Hole Research Cen­tre. Orig­i­nal text may be edited for con­tent and length.

(Sources: WHRC, 12.04.2012; News­Wise, 12.04.2012; Envi­ron­men­tal Research Let­ters, 12.04.2012)

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