Experts say UN livestock emissions report severely distorts our work

The United Nations’ flagship report on livestock emissions is facing calls to withdraw it from two key experts who say it grossly distorts their work.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has misused their research and underestimated the potential to reduce meat intake, according to a letter from two academics seen by the Guardian. potential for agricultural emissions.

Paul Behrens, an associate professor at Leiden University, and Matthew Hayek, an assistant professor at New York University, both accused the FAO study of systemic errors, an imperfect framework and grossly inappropriate use of source data.

Hayek told the Guardian: FAO’s mistakes were multiple, serious and conceptual, all of which had the effect of making the potential for emissions reductions from dietary changes far lower than they should have been. None of these errors had the opposite effect.

Agricultural emissions account for 23% of global greenhouse gas emissions, much of which is attributed to methane produced in livestock burps and manure, as well as clearing forests for grazing and feed crops. As global meat production surged by 39% in the first two decades of this century, agricultural emissions also increased by 14%.

At the COP28 climate summit in December, FAO released the third report in a series of studies on livestock emissions. In addition to lowering the FAO’s estimate of livestock’s contribution to overall global warming for the third time in a row, it cites a 2017 paper by Behrens et al., arguing that giving up meat would only reduce global agricultural emissions by 2 .

Behrenss’s 2017 paper assessed the environmental impact of the then-government-supported National Recommended Diets (NRDs), which are now outdated. Since then, many countries such as China and Denmark have significantly reduced their recommended meat intake, while Germany now calls for a 75% plant-based diet in its NRD.

According to the letter, Behrens said substantial evidence in large environmental reports recommending less meat, such as the Eat-Lancet diet for planetary health, has been ignored.

Behrens told the Guardian that current scientific consensus is that dietary shifts are our biggest lever to reduce emissions and other damage caused by the food system. But the FAO chose the crudest and most inappropriate approach to its estimate and framed it in a way that would be very useful to interest groups seeking to demonstrate that plant-based diets offer smaller relief compared with alternatives potential.

In a recent paper, Behrens and Hayek surveyed more than 200 climate scientists, 78% of whom said livestock herd sizes must peak by 2025 if the world is to avoid dangerous global warming. Very important.

The scientists said that in addition to using outdated NRDs, the FAO report systematically underestimated the emissions reduction potential of dietary shifts through what the letter described as a series of methodological errors.

The authors say these include: double-counting meat emissions before 2050, mixing different baseline years in analyses, and steering data inputs that inappropriately support diets that increase global meat consumption. The FAO paper also ignores the opportunity costs of carbon sequestration on non-agricultural land.

Hayek said the FAO inappropriately cited a report he co-authored that measured emissions from all agricultural products and applied it only to emissions from livestock. It’s not just about comparing apples to oranges, he said. It’s like comparing a very small apple to a very large orange.

Accordingly, he said, the mitigation potential from raising fewer livestock has been underestimated by a factor of six to 40.

FAO is the world’s leading source of agricultural data, and its reports are frequently used by authoritative bodies such as the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But FAO is also responsible for improving livestock productivity to enhance nutrition and food security, which could create a conflict of interest.

Former officials have accused the FAO of censoring and undermining its work as it challenges the status of the livestock industry. FAO’s recently released roadmap to make the sector sustainable also omitted the option of reducing meat intake from a list of 120 policy interventions.

The paper drew praise from meat industry lobbyists, one of whom called it “sweet to the ears” when it was released at Cop28.

An FAO spokesperson said: As a knowledge-based organization, FAO is fully committed to ensuring the accuracy and integrity of scientific publications, particularly given the significant impact this has on policy development and public understanding.

We would like to assure you that the reports in question have undergone a rigorous review process, including internal and external double-blind peer review, to ensure the research meets the highest standards of quality and accuracy and minimizes potential bias. FAO will examine issues raised by academics and engage in an exchange of technical views with them.