Media Partnership - The road to COP26: is beef a climate change villain?

As countries put forward their net-zero pledges on the run up to COP26, debate has intensified on strategies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across different sectors. There is little question that the greatest contribution comes from the energy sector (transport, industry and buildings), which currently accounts for 73.2 percent of GHG emissions. But other sectors also have a role to play. In discussing how to reduce emissions from agriculture, beef is often singled out as a climate change villain. In the United Kingdom, the recently published “National Food Strategy” proposes to reduce meat consumption by 30 percent over ten years, as a means to reaching the UK net-zero targets. This is a possible way ahead, but it is hardly the only one. In the same way that low carbon agriculture is already a reality in many places, many argue that livestock can also be produced sustainably, with little or no GHG emissions. This webinar assessed the contribution of livestock to climate change and present initiatives already under way to produce beef sustainably. This debate had panelists from different sectors both in Brazil and the UK.