The way the world manages land, produces and eats food has to change to curb global warming or food security, health and biodiversity will be at risk, a U.N. report on the effects of climate change on land said on Thursday.
The report said global population growth and changes in consumption patterns have caused unprecedented rates of land and water use. It called for big changes to farming and eating habits, but stopped short of explicitly advocating going meat free.
Dietary changes, featuring plant-based foods and sustainable animal-sourced food, could free up several million square kilometres of land by 2050 and potentially cut 0.7-8.0 gigatonnes a year of carbon dioxide equivalent, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in the report.
“Delaying action … could result in some irreversible impacts on some ecosystems, which in the longer term has the potential to lead to substantial additional emissions from ecosystems that would accelerate global warming,”
it said on Global WarmingThe IPCC met to finalize the report this week in Geneva, Switzerland, which should help to guide governments meeting later this year at a conference in Chile on ways to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement and avoid runaway climate change.
Ahead of the report’s release, Greenpeace activists in Switzerland unveiled a banner outside the meeting reading “Less Meat=Less Heat. Climate Action NOW!”
In a nearly 60-page summary for policymakers, the IPCC said that since the pre-industrial period, land surface air temperature has already risen by 1.53 degrees Celsius – twice as much as the global average temperature (0.87C).
Such warming has caused more heatwaves, droughts and heavy precipitation, as well as land degradation and desertification.
Human use directly affects more than 70% of the global, ice-free land surface and agriculture accounts for 70% of freshwater use.
Agriculture, forestry and other land use activities accounted for 23% of total net manmade greenhouse gas emissions during 2007-2016. When pre- and post-production activity in the food system are included, that rises to up to 37%.
“This is a perfect storm. Limited land, an expanding human population, and all wrapped in a suffocating blanket of climate emergency,” Dave Reay, professor of carbon management at the University of Edinburgh said, commenting on the report.
Last year, in the IPCC’s first special report, it had already warned that keeping the Earth’s temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), rather than the 2C target agreed under the Paris Agreement, would require rapid changes.
