Ignoring greenhouse gas emissions from livestock industry is at our own peril

HELSINK: According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, the production of meat and other animal-based products is responsible for around 18 to 20 per cent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

If FAO’s assessment is correct, animal waste and the use of nitrogen based fertilisers to grow fodder annually create about six million tons of nitrous oxide- 65-70 per cent of our total emissions. The impact to global temperatures of this is equivalent to roughly two billion tons of carbon dioxide per year. Besides nitrous oxide, the livestock industry produces more than 100 million tons of methane per year, heating the planet as much as three and a half billion tons of carbon dioxide. This is further exacerbated by the clearing of vast swathes of tropical rainforests for pasture and growing fodder, annually releasing an additional 2.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Our total emissions of carbon dioxide currently amount to slightly more than 35 billion tons, in addition to which we also produce at least 350 million tons of methane and nine million tons of nitrous oxide.

Many governments, municipalities and private companies have already started to implement programmes aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a fraction of their current levels in the coming decades. In 2015, more than 90 per cent of new energy investments have shifted to renewables, with fossil fuels and nuclear power struggling to attract the remaining 10 per cent.

Similarly, new technological solutions for reducing vehicular emissions as well as industrial production, construction, lighting, and the heating and cooling of buildings are either being developed or already implemented. Even airlines and shipping companies have accepted the challenge. Some sectors have embraced these challenges with more enthusiasm than others, but there seems to be a general consensus that considerable changes are needed to prevent a full- scale environmental catastrophe.

The exception to the general shift toward environmental sustainability appears to be food production. Governments, and intergovernmental organisations like FAO are still discussing ways of increasing the global meat production from 200 million to 470 million tons by 2050.

This is of great concern even if meat, dairy and other animal products really were responsible for only 20 per cent of our combined greenhouse gas emissions.

Even then, doubling the industry’s contribution would probably make it impossible to limit global warming to 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius, as agreed in Paris.

It is possible that the role of the livestock industry has been seriously underestimated. According to current estimates, natural lakes and ponds probably produce about 85 million tons and man-made reservoirs between 20-100 million tons of methane each year. While methane from reservoirs is considered to be a by-product of the energy industry, emissions from natural lakes, ponds and rivers are classified as “natural emissions” .

Research has shown that there are significant variations in the methane levels produced by bodies of freshwater. Heterotrophic lakes whose water and sediments only contain trace amounts of nutrients and organic matter produce very little methane. The smallest measured annual per hectare emissions from such lakes have been as little as 0.78 kilogrammes.