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The impact of livestock on biodiversity

Summary of the guidelines for assessment











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    Book (stand-alone)
    Guideline
    Biodiversity and the livestock sector - Guidelines for quantitative assessment
    Version 1
    2020
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    The Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on biodiversity, hereafter called Biodiversity TAG, is composed of 25 international experts in ecology, biodiversity indicators, agronomy, life cycle assessment, livestock production systems, and environmental science. Their backgrounds, complementary between systems and regions, allowed them to understand and address different perspectives. The aim of the methodology developed in these guidelines is to introduce a harmonized international approach for assessing the impacts of livestock on biodiversity. The livestock sector is a major user of natural resources (land in particular) and an important contributor to pollution (e.g. causing nutrient losses, increasing greenhouse gas emissions), which makes it one of the sectors with the highest impact on biodiversity. At the same time, livestock production is one of the few sectors with not only negative but also positive impacts on biodiversity; therefore, the sector can pull two levers to improve its biodiversity performance – mitigate harm and maximize benefits. Many environmental assessments of the livestock sector have not addressed biodiversity because of its intrinsic complexity. These guidelines strive to include biodiversity in environmental assessments, in order to increase the understanding of the impacts of livestock on biodiversity and to reveal possible synergies or trade-offs with other environmental criteria or Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Several indicators in these guidelines are also of relevance for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
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    Brochure, flyer, fact-sheet
    Brochure
    Biodiversity and the livestock sector
    Summary of the guidelines for assessment
    2020
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    Greenhouse gas emissions can be expressed as CO2 equivalence and water use in terms of litres consumed, but there is no single common unit to measure biodiversity because of its multivariate nature, context-specificity and because conservation priorities are subject to a societal value judgment. The intrinsic complexity of biodiversity may explain why it has been left out of many environmental assessments of the livestock sector. Yet, the impact of livestock on biodiversity needs to be measured to support policy development and sustainable management decisions. The Livestock Environmental Assessment and Performance (LEAP) Partnership has tackled the challenge and published the guidelines on biodiversity with the objective to provide step-by-step recommendations for the quantitative assessment of the effects of livestock production on wild biodiversity, based on existing indicators and methods. The guidelines are relevant to a range of assessment objectives, users, scales, geographical regions, livestock species, and production systems.
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    Book (stand-alone)
    Technical book
    Project on Livestock Industrialization, Trade and Social-Health-Environment Impacts in Developing Countries
    Policy, Technical, and Environmental Determinants and Implications of the Scaling-Up of Livestock Production in Four Fast-Growing Developing Countries: A Synthesis
    2003
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    High-profile
    FAO Strategy on Climate Change 2022–2031 2022
    The FAO Strategy on Climate Change 2022–2031 was endorsed by FAO Council in June 2022. This new strategy replaces the previous strategy from 2017 to better FAO's climate action with the Strategic Framework 2022-2031, and other FAO strategies that have been developed since then. The Strategy was elaborated following an inclusive process of consultation with FAO Members, FAO staff from headquarters and decentralized offices, as well as external partners. It articulates FAO's vision for agrifood systems by 2050, around three main pillars of action: at global and regional level, at country level, and at local level. The Strategy also encourages key guiding principles for action, such as science and innovation, inclusiveness, partnerships, and access to finance.
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    Book (series)
    Flagship
    The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021
    Transforming food systems for food security, improved nutrition and affordable healthy diets for all
    2021
    In recent years, several major drivers have put the world off track to ending world hunger and malnutrition in all its forms by 2030. The challenges have grown with the COVID-19 pandemic and related containment measures. This report presents the first global assessment of food insecurity and malnutrition for 2020 and offers some indication of what hunger might look like by 2030 in a scenario further complicated by the enduring effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also includes new estimates of the cost and affordability of healthy diets, which provide an important link between the food security and nutrition indicators and the analysis of their trends. Altogether, the report highlights the need for a deeper reflection on how to better address the global food security and nutrition situation.To understand how hunger and malnutrition have reached these critical levels, this report draws on the analyses of the past four editions, which have produced a vast, evidence-based body of knowledge of the major drivers behind the recent changes in food security and nutrition. These drivers, which are increasing in frequency and intensity, include conflicts, climate variability and extremes, and economic slowdowns and downturns – all exacerbated by the underlying causes of poverty and very high and persistent levels of inequality. In addition, millions of people around the world suffer from food insecurity and different forms of malnutrition because they cannot afford the cost of healthy diets. From a synthesized understanding of this knowledge, updates and additional analyses are generated to create a holistic view of the combined effects of these drivers, both on each other and on food systems, and how they negatively affect food security and nutrition around the world.In turn, the evidence informs an in-depth look at how to move from silo solutions to integrated food systems solutions. In this regard, the report proposes transformative pathways that specifically address the challenges posed by the major drivers, also highlighting the types of policy and investment portfolios required to transform food systems for food security, improved nutrition, and affordable healthy diets for all. The report observes that, while the pandemic has caused major setbacks, there is much to be learned from the vulnerabilities and inequalities it has laid bare. If taken to heart, these new insights and wisdom can help get the world back on track towards the goal of ending hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition in all its forms.
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    Booklet
    Corporate general interest
    Emissions due to agriculture
    Global, regional and country trends 2000–2018
    2021
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    The FAOSTAT emissions database is composed of several data domains covering the categories of the IPCC Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sector of the national GHG inventory. Energy use in agriculture is additionally included as relevant to emissions from agriculture as an economic production sector under the ISIC A statistical classification, though recognizing that, in terms of IPCC, they are instead part of the Energy sector of the national GHG inventory. FAO emissions estimates are available over the period 1961–2018 for agriculture production processes from crop and livestock activities. Land use emissions and removals are generally available only for the period 1990–2019. This analytical brief focuses on overall trends over the period 2000–2018.