After frantic local weather negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan final 12 months, significant commitments to cut back agricultural methane have been absent from the COP29 deal.
This isn’t shocking. The agriculture business is aware of tips on how to organise itself. With over 200 delegates out in power at Baku, it’s no surprise coverage selections have served this business significantly effectively.
With low expectations for COP29, many environmental teams have had one eye fastened on subsequent 12 months’s COP30 in Belém, Brazil. However with Brazil rating the third-largest cattle producer and second-largest beef exporter on the earth, it’s possible the meat and dairy business are additionally watching with an eagle eye.
Given Brazil’s standing as a serious beef exporter, agricultural methane ought to be a core focus in Belém’s negotiations and upcoming nationwide local weather plans. At COP29, waste was the one sector that obtained appreciable concentrate on methane, together with a new drive to cut back these emissions from landfill.
We have to convey the identical focus to one of many world’s largest sources of artificial methane emissions: the Huge Meat and Dairy business.
Huge Meat and Dairy
Whereas fossil gas firms have been scrutinised for his or her contributions to the local weather disaster, the meat and dairy business’s emissions have been left to function beneath the radar.
Again in 2022, we on the Altering Markets Basis, alongside the Institute for Agriculture and Commerce Coverage (IATP), calculated for the primary time the methane emissions of 15 of the most important meat and dairy firms.
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Whereas business drags its heels on sufficient voluntary targets, it’s as much as governments to set obligatory necessities for agricultural methane emissions reductions, to convey these extremely polluting firms in line.
This report confirmed their mixed methane emissions equated to over 80 per cent of the European Union’s whole methane footprint. What’s extra, after we in contrast these 15 firms’ greenhouse gasoline emissions to grease giants, their mixed emissions exceeded the person footprints of the most important companies.
This 12 months, we examined the coverage panorama within the 11 international locations the place 22 of the most important meat and dairy firms are headquartered, which incorporates Brazil.
Our findings revealed that these international locations lacked obligatory necessities for agricultural methane emissions reductions, cuts in livestock manufacturing, or the business’s inclusion in any type of emissions pricing scheme – regardless of almost all signing the World Methane Pledge.
As an alternative, the panorama is dominated by a concentrate on technical options – similar to methane-reducing vaccines for cows – which, alone, will fail to attain the numerous emissions reductions required by 2030.
What’s extra, the Huge Meat and Dairy firms have little to again their environmental commitments up. Among the many 22 firms we analysed, 15 have made voluntary web zero pledges, however solely three align with the Science-Primarily based Targets Initiative’s goal for reaching web zero emissions by 2050.
Whereas there’s numerous speak round business commitments and voluntary initiatives, agriculture is being given a free cross. The worst half is: nobody is holding these firms to account.
That ought to be the precedence between now and COP30 in Belém subsequent November.
The COP30 host itself, Brazil, introduced the very best variety of agriculture lobbyists of any nation to COP29, together with greater than 20 representatives from the most important meat firms.
Whereas business drags its heels on sufficient voluntary targets, it’s as much as governments to set obligatory necessities for agricultural methane emissions reductions, to convey these extremely polluting firms in line.
The science couldn’t be clearer: to maintain the 1.5°C restrict alive we should quickly tackle and scale back all types of greenhouse gasoline emissions, methane included. We should name out the main sources of methane, and the continual air pollution by international firms.
Till this occurs, our makes an attempt to cut back methane emissions won’t work. It’s time to demand a stage of duty and accountability from Huge Meat and Dairy.
This story was revealed with permission from Thomson Reuters Basis, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian information, local weather change, resilience, ladies’s rights, trafficking and property rights. Go to https://www.context.information/.
