November 8, 2024

Thirteen percent drop in high-income nations' beef output could remove 125 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, study finds

High-income countries could remove 125 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from air — more than the past three years' global fossil fuel emissions — if they cut down on beef production by only 13%, according to a study.

Researchers, including those from New York University (US), said that reducing beef production could serve as a "powerful complement" to, and not a substitute for, efforts directed at lowering fossil fuel emissions, which is core to tackling climate change.

As a means to lower emissions, scientists and environmental activists around the world are increasingly calling for drastic reductions in producing and consuming meat, including beef.

The study's authors said cutbacks in meat production in wealthier countries would reduce the land size needed for grazing cattle, therefore allowing forests to naturally regrow on what are currently pasturelands.

The "return of trees" would drive significant decline in fossil fuel emissions, which the team estimated to be about three years' worth of those worldwide.

"We find that removing beef-producing cattle from high-carbon intensity pastures could sequester (or remove) 34 gigatonnes of carbon i.e. 125 gigatonnes of CO2 into ecosystems, which is an amount greater than global fossil CO2 emissions from 2021-2023," the researchers wrote in the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

- The Economic Times