The industry argues it is world-leading because it produces low methane per kg of milk solids and meat compared with competitors overseas. But it’s not doing enough to reduce methane
“Climate change is a grave and mounting threat to our wellbeing and a healthy planet,” the UN says about its latest report on the crisis.
The findings are “a dire warning about the consequences of inaction”, warned Hoesung Lee, chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which deployed 270 scientists from 67 countries to produce the report.
At Newsroom, we’ve covered the key conclusions for the world, and their relevance to us in New Zealand, in this article by my colleague Marc Daalder; and on forestry in this article by Dame Anne Salmond.
Dame Anne concluded: “It is now beyond doubt that New Zealandʼs primary strategy for tackling climate change – offsetting through the Emissions Trading Scheme, with the financial incentives it gives to the large-scale planting of monocultures of exotic pine trees – runs in the opposite direction to international scientific advice.”
This article is about the UN’s conclusions on the impact on farming and food globally, and the imperatives for us in New Zealand. After all, that sector is our largest export earner and generates half our greenhouse gas emissions. The sector’s methane emissions alone account for 36 percent of our total emissions.
The UN report devotes a chapter to food, fibre and ecosystem products, the last being nature’s provision to us of resources and services essential to life on the planet for humans and all other species.
These are the scientists’ core conclusions:
* Climate change impacts are stressing agriculture, forestry, fisheries, and aquaculture, increasingly hindering efforts to meet human needs.
* Human-induced warming has slowed growth of agricultural productivity over the past 50 years in mid- and low-latitudes.
* Crop yields are compromised by surface ozone.
* Methane emissions have raised climate temperatures and surface ozone concentrations, thereby causing 62 percent of the loss in crop yields. (In its previous climate report last August, the UN said methane had caused a 0.5C rise in global temperatures so far, while carbon dioxide has caused 0.8C of warming).
* Warming is negatively affecting crop and grassland quality and harvest stability.
* Warmer and drier conditions have increased tree mortality and forest disturbances in many temperate and boreal biomes, negatively affecting provisioning services.
* Ocean warming has decreased sustainable yields of some wild fish populations.
* Ocean acidification and warming have already affected farmed aquatic species.
Among the range of remedies to these ecosystem, agriculture and food problems, “alternative protein sources for human food and livestock feed are receiving considerable attention”, the report says.
Meat produced in labs “is one potential contributor to the human demand for protein in the future. Such technology may be highly disruptive to existing value chains but could lead to significant reduction in land use for pastures and crop-based animal feeds”.
Yet, our agri-business sector remains in denial. It continues to argue it is world-leading because its farming systems produce low methane per kilogram of milk solids and meat compared with competitors overseas. Therefore, it is up to the rest of the world, the sector says, to catch up with it. Meanwhile, it’s putting only small sums into myriad projects to try to chip away at reducing methane.
But here, and around the world, farming’s problems are far deeper and the solutions far more complex. The way humanity uses land, farms, produces food and extracts natural resources from the planet wreaks havoc on ecosystems. The only remedy is ecosystem restoration.
In its latest report, the UN makes it abundantly clear that the threats to global food security are more severe than many businesses and policymakers realise. It argues more cogently than ever for ecosystem restoration as the solution.
Even under the most optimistic scenario of only a 1.5C rise in temperature, the report said it was likely that 9 percent of land and freshwater species worldwide would face a “very high risk of extinction”.
Should warming reach 2C by the end of the century – the upper limit of the Paris Agreement – 18 percent of all species on land would be at risk of extinction, according to the report. At 4C, every second plant or animal species would be threatened.
Even in a world with low greenhouse gas emissions, warming below 1.6C by 2100, the report estimates 8 percent of today's farmland would become climatically unsuitable by the end of the century.
As for the remedy: “Healthy ecosystems are more resilient to climate change and provide life-critical services such as food and clean water,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, one of the two co-chairs of the working group that produced the report.
“By restoring degraded ecosystems and effectively and equitably conserving 30 to 50 percent of Earth’s land, freshwater and ocean habitats, society can benefit from nature’s capacity to absorb and store carbon, and we can accelerate progress towards sustainable development, but adequate finance and political support are essential,” he said.
To rise to these towering challenges, nations will have to deploy whole-of-society responses. Governments, the private sector and civil society will have to work together to prioritise risks to reduce, ensure equity and justice, and make investment decisions.
By using such a multi-faceted, multi-party response, “different interests, values and world views can be reconciled,” said Debra Roberts, the working group’s other co-chair and an expert in sustainable and resilient cities.
“By bringing together scientific and technological know-how as well as Indigenous and local knowledge, solutions will be more effective. Failure to achieve climate-resilient and sustainable development will result in a sub-optimal future for people and nature.”
The emphasis on Indigenous knowledge was the strongest yet in a UN climate report and very welcome. It reflects in part the growing research and practices of a young generation of Indigenous scientists who are perfectly at home collaborating with Western science colleagues to the benefit of both disciplines. Jessica Hernandez of El Salvador is one example, as a recent profile by the US's National Audubon Society describes.
This cross-pollination of science is a field in which Aotearoa excels. For example, all 11 National Science Challenges are drawing in tandem on Mātauranga Māori and Western science to learn from each other to progress our knowledge of our land, water, climate and biological heritage.
Likewise, the Aotearoa Circle of business and public sector sustainability leaders incorporates in its work the Te Ao Māori worldview (the inter-connectedness of all living and non-living things) and Mātauranga Māori. The latest example is its Low Carbon Energy Roadmap.
If we build rapidly and effectively on these early examples of whole-of-society engagement and empowerment, we will vastly improve the future of Aotearoa. A decade from now, we’ll remember this UN report as the grim reckoning of humanity’s ecological failures that finally triggered our transformation.
