The Key Role of Production Efficiency Changes in Livestock Methane Emission Mitigation

AGU Advances

Jinfeng Chang¹  Mario Herrero²  Yi Yin³  Petr Havlik⁴  Philippe Ciais⁵  Shushi Peng⁶ 

[1] College of Environmental and Resource Sciences Zhejiang University Hangzhou China;Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization St Lucia QLD Australia;Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences California Institute of Technology Pasadena CA USA;International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis Laxenburg Austria;Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement LSCE/IPSL CEA‐CNRS‐UVSQ Université Paris‐Saclay Gif‐sur‐Yvette France;Sino‐French Institute for Earth System Science College of Urban and Environmental Sciences Peking University Beijing China;

关键词: climate change;    livestock;    methane emission;    mitigation;   

DOI  :  10.1029/2021AV000391

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Abstract The livestock sector is the largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions and is projected to increase in the future with the increased demand for livestock products. Here, we compare livestock methane emissions and emission intensities, defined by the amount of methane emitted per unit of animal proteins, estimated by different methodologies, and identify mitigation potentials in different regions of the world based on possible future projections. We show that emission intensity decreased for most livestock categories globally during 2000–2018, due to an increasing protein‐production efficiency, and the IPCC Tier 2 method should be used for capturing the temporal changes in the emission intensities. We further show that efforts on the demand‐side to promote balanced, healthy, and environmentally sustainable diets in most countries will not be sufficient to mitigate livestock methane emissions without parallel efforts to improve production efficiency. The latter efforts have much greater mitigating effects than demand‐side efforts, and hence should be prioritized in a few developing countries that contribute most of the mitigation potential.

【 授权许可】

Unknown