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Displaying 61 - 70 of 470Going up in smoke: how livestock keeping can reduce wildfires
In recent years there have been devastating wildfires across the world. Wildfire incidence is increasing with climate change, and wildfires are predicted to increase by 50% by the end of the centuryi . Such intense, uncontrolled wildfires are massively damaging to environments and to people, involving multiple deaths – including among firefighters - and widespread destruction of property.
Enhancing biodiversity through livestock keeping
Extensive livestock use can enhance biodiversity and support species conservation in multiple ways. Mobile pastoral systems can create bio-corridors through transhumance routes and disperse seeds, enhancing biodiversity across landscapes, for example. Mobile livestock also create fertile hotspots across rangelands, and livestock grazing is essential in reducing fire loads in vulnerable ecosystems.
Why tree planting in rangelands can be bad for biodiversity and the climate
Huge global targets for tree planting are being set; everyone is urged to plant a tree to save the planet. But does this always make sense, particularly in rangelands where pastoralists live? Discussions in the run up to the UN’s COP15 conference on biodiversity have focused on tree planting as a way to combat desertification, improve biodiversity and address climate change through ‘carbon offset’ schemes. Many of these initiatives are deeply problematic, yet have targeted over one billion hectares of rangelands across the worldi .
The benefits of pastoralism for biodiversity and the climate
Livestock can be good for the environment. It depends on which livestock, where. Pastoralism – the system of often mobile, extensive livestock production on rangelands – can improve biodiversity, help sequester carbon and protect the environment. In the face of simplistic anti-livestock narratives, it is important to recognise the role of pastoral systems and pastoralists in addressing the linked crises of climate and biodiversity.
Livestock, climate and the politics of resources
This primer focuses on one type of livestock-keeping: pastoralism. Pastoralism is a way of raising livestock that makes use of variable landscapes by moving animals and managing their grazing.1 It provides livelihoods for many millions of people and makes use of rangelands on every continent but Antarctica, across more than half the world’s land surface.
Are livestock always bad for the planet?
Urgent climate challenges have triggered calls for radical, widespread changes in what we eat, pushing for the drastic reduction if not elimination of animal-source foods from our diets. But high-profile debates, based on patchy evidence, are failing to differentiate between varied landscapes, environments and production methods. Relatively lowimpact, extensive livestock production, such as pastoralism, is being lumped in with industrial systems in the conversation about the future of food.
Livestock, methane and climate change: the politics of global assessments
The relationship between livestock production and climate change is the subject of hot debate, with arguments for major shifts in diets and a reduction in livestockproduction. This Perspective examines how global assessments of livestock-derived methane emissions are framed, identifying assumptions and data gaps that influence standard life-cycle analysis approaches.
Total’s Congo offsetting project ‘snatched our land’
Energy transition minerals and their intersection with land-connected peoples
Rapidly transitioning the global energy system to renewables is considered necessary to combat climate change. Current estimates suggest that at least 30 energy transition minerals and metals (ETMs) form the material base for the energy transition. The inventory of ETMs indicates a high level of intersectionality with territories less impacted by the historic forces of industrialization.