Report calls for more awareness about livestock emissions

The research paper, entitled Livestock – Climate Change’s Forgotten Sector: Global Public Opinion on Meat and Dairy Consumption​, was published by Chatham House this week. 

It commissioned Ipsos MORI to undertake the first multi-country, multilingual online survey in order to explore public attitudes on the relationship between meat/dairy consumption and climate change, which revealed a significant gap in awareness about livestock’s contribution to climate change.

The report claimed the livestock sector was a major driver of climate change, accounting for 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, which it said was more than the direct emissions from the transport sector.

It added: "Even with ambitious supply-side action to reduce the emissions intensity of livestock production, rising global demand for meat and dairy produce means emissions will continue to rise."​

However, despite concerns that a change in the global consumption of meat and dairy was key to keeping the global temperature rising above 2°C, there was a lack of effort to reduce consumption, it claimed.

The survey was conducted online in Brazil, mainland China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Poland, Russia, South Africa, the UK and the US, with a minimum of 1,000 respondents from each country.

It found that those who were aware of the links between livestock emissions were more inclined to reduce their meat and dairy consumption on this basis, suggesting that the increasing awareness on the impact livestock has on the environment is key to achieving meaningful change.

Interestingly, the report also suggested that consumers in emerging economies – such as Brazil, India and China – were more accepting of anthropogenic climate change, and had greater consideration of climate change when choosing meat and dairy products, including modifying their consumption, despite the fact China and Brazil are two of the biggest meat-consuming countries.

Although the report highlighted meat and dairy consumption as a significant contributor to global emissions, ‘Power production’, ‘industry’ and ‘deforestation’ were all shown to have a higher share.