Opinion: Why it's time for Just Transition within food systems

The Dutch Government made headlines last month by announcing its plans to cut livestock production by 30% to address its “nitrogen crisis.” While the ambition is commendable and crucial if the country is to meet its climate and environmental goals, the proposed strategy should also respect the principles of Just Transition. This would ensure an equitable transformation for farmers and supply chain workers towards a nature-positive food system.

In a nutshell, a Just Livestock Transition necessitates a thorough transformation of the industrialized livestock production to facilitate a transition towards a more climate-compatible and healthy food system. The key here is to ensure that a transition away from the most resource-intensive way of protein production does not further exacerbate inequalities which deeply affect existing food systems.

In the energy sector, Just Transition has become a widely accepted framework guiding a transition towards a low-carbon economy. However, industrialized livestock production — which is equally damaging to the climate and environment — has not yet been put alongside other climate-incompatible industries and addressed through a lens of a Just Transition.

The livestock sector accounts for at least 14.5 % of all greenhouse gas emissions and is projected to account for up to 81% of the 1.5 degrees Celsius emissions budget by 2050 if production continues unabated. The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stresses the urgent need for “rapid, persistent, and substantial” cuts in methane emissions stemming from fossil fuels and livestock production.

Present trends in livestock production are severely endangering our planet’s ecosystems, natural resources, livelihoods, human health, and animal welfare. If intensive animal agriculture continues at its current pace, it will render the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals unachievable.

Contrary to what is often claimed, transitioning to plant-rich diets could help improve equitable food distribution and nutrition security. Growing crops only for human use may boost available food calories by up to 70%, serving an additional four billion people. With about 800 million hungry people globally, animal products inefficiently use resources, especially when nutritious plant-based food choices are readily available and accessible. If the world embraced plant-rich diets, it could free up to 75% of agricultural land.

A Just Livestock Transition could also generate significant socioeconomic and health benefits. The International Labor Organisation and the Inter-American Development Bank estimate that a transition to more plant-based diets would create 15 million jobs net in Latin America and the Caribbean by 2030.

Overall, the jobs in plant-based food production would be safer, more equitable, support gender parity, and strengthen rural economies when coupled with increased public services. Additionally, shifting to a diet that relies less on animal products and more on fruits and vegetables could avoid 5.1 million diet-related deaths and dramatically reduce health costs by $735 billion per year by 2050.

Ahead of the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties in November, there is a lot that policymakers can do to help facilitate a transition in order to meet international targets on time.

Here are the seven key steps to initiate a Just Livestock Transition within food systems:

First, national governments and multilateral institutions must acknowledge that reducing industrialized livestock production and consumption is essential to meet the global targets of the Sustainable Development Goals, the Paris Agreement, and the Convention on Biological Diversity. Focusing on technological improvements alone cannot address the core problem and will only delay and deepen the climate, environmental, health, as well as food and nutrition security crises we are seeing right now.

Second, policymakers must include the principles of Just Transition within their livestock production and embed the co-benefits of the transition — job creation, social justice, poverty reduction, and better public health — to their financial and socioeconomic strategies.

Third, funding country-specific transition roadmaps in collaboration with farmers, workers, as well as experts in nutrition, public health, environment, circular economy, gender, human rights and animal welfare, and labor groups are essential to ensure inclusion, multistakeholder common ground, and buy-in from the onset.

Fourth, ​​it is of vital importance to acknowledge the concern a transition of this magnitude prompts, and understand that hesitation is a normal reaction to change. With time, it is expected the many benefits of a Just Transition will be embraced. The concerns about possible negative socioeconomic impacts of the transition among farmers, supply chain workers, and even finance leaders have to be addressed by engaging in multilateral dialogues. The pathways for an equitable transition for farmers, growers, and processors must be showcased in an accessible way, with clear explanations about how this can enable job creation and boost GDP.

Fifth, a Just Transition fund for animal agriculture should be established to enable countries and regions to assist farmers and communities directly during the transition period. A similar approach was used by the European Union when it established a Just Transition Fund to support regions in the transition towards climate neutrality. However, this focused mainly on energy transition without addressing other resource-intensive industries such as livestock production.

Sixth, based on the roadmaps, a set of global multidisciplinary policy measures must be taken to incentivize the equitable reduction and redistribution of animal protein production and consumption. These must include a shift in public subsidies away from industrial feed and livestock production; a stronger regulatory framework to protect air, water, soil resources; and track GHG emissions.

Changes in national dietary guidelines, public procurement rules, promotion campaigns, research and development, as well as the internalization of negative externalities to incentivize the production and consumption of more sustainable and healthy food must be considered.

Finally, Just Livestock Transition must become the cornerstone of the revised Nationally Determined Contributions as a major climate change mitigation and adaptation strategy. Setting evidence-based targets, along with mandatory reporting, to reduce emissions from the livestock sector is critical to staying below 2 degrees Celsius. This is becoming increasingly important as we are nearing the super year of 2025, which is the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement and leaves us with five years to meet the SDGs.

A Just Livestock Transition is our best shot at a global solution that leaves no one behind.

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