ANOTHER UN agency has again reached the conclusion that the world should move away from dairy and meat consumption and toward a more grain- and vegetarian-based diet to save the environment. The UN Environmental Program (UNEP), through its International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management, released a report June 2 calling for such a shift "to dramatically reduce pressure on the environment," according to UNEP's news release announcing the report. The report - "Environmental Impacts of Consumption & Production: Priority Products & Materials" - argues that current trends in the production and use of energy and food "are draining freshwater supplies, triggering losses of economically important ecosystems such as forests, intensifying disease and death rates and raising pollution to unsustainable levels." Fixing this, according to the report, can start with changes in energy use and food consumption "at the household," where the report calls for individuals to change how they cool and heat their homes, their use of appliances and gadgets and the way they travel. This is the point at which the report calls for people to make dietary shifts to vegetarianism. Achim Steiner, UN undersecretary general and UNEP director, in the news release, said "decoupling growth from environmental degradation is the number-one challenge facing governments," and setting priorities to achieve this "would seem prudent and sensible to fast track a low-carbon, resource-efficient 'green economy'". The panel reviewed "all available science," Steiner said, and concluded that two broad areas of production and use are having "a disproportionately high impact on people and the planet's life support system": (1) energy and (2) agriculture, "especially raising livestock for dairy and meat products". The panel set three areas for transformational change, including agriculture, "particularly products derived from animals," which the report says "are fed more than half of the world's crops." It added that, worldwide, agricultural production accounts for 70% of freshwater consumption and 38% of land use and that food production accounts for 19% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
Go vegetarian to save the world: UN
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