Robert Goodland: 'Forests, Fisheries, Agriculture: A Vision for Sustainability'

.. emissions attributable to livestock should be considered as impacts managed or owned by the industry or sector that emits them..

Expert consultation on greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation potentials
FAO 2-4 December 2009

Excerpts:

--If livestock are responsible for at least 51% of anthropogenic GHG emissions, then mitigation measures no longer suffice, and broadly avoiding emissions attributable to livestock becomes critical.

--The same crops used to manufacture biofuels and feed livestock can be used instead to feed people. The number of hungry people in the world now exceeds 1 billion for the first time ever, with a 20% increase in malnutrition expected by 2050. Already 6 million children die of hunger each year.

--Besides GHG emissions attributable to livestock products, they are also highly inefficient in their use of water, when compared to better alternatives. For example, assessments have shown as much as 200,000 litres of water used in the production of each kilogram of beef, versus 2,000 litres of water per kilogram of soybeans.Besides the amount of water used for livestock products, they are responsible for high levels of feedlot runoff, pollution of rivers and coastal waters (red tides), and eutrophication, leading to decreases in populations of aquatic organisms, and diminished availability of clean water. Livestock across the world have also been implicated as key drivers of today’s depletion of water tables, decreased percolation rates of rain into soils, and desertification, all of which are intensifying on a worldwide basis..

--As with all other emissions in the world, the emissions attributable to livestock should be considered as impacts managed or owned by the industry or sector that emits them...

--Funding for the following should be reduced or dropped, to make more resources available for investments in sustainability and food security: All large-scale livestock and feed production; industrial logging of old-growth forest; crops produced in tropical industrial export plantations; food-based crops used to manufacture biofuels; most marine commercial fisheries, until they recover to exploitable levels....


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more information:

- Wall of trees proposed to stop spread of Sahara

Source: 'Forests, Fisheries, Agriculture: A Vision for Sustainability'
Author: Robert Goodland

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