Grazing systems and pasture condition
Livestock's long shadow: environmental issues and options
Environmental impact of livestock sector must addressed urgently
Authors:
H. Steinfeld; P. Gerber; T. Wassenaar; V. Castel; M. Rosales; C. de Haan
Publisher:
Livestock, Environment and Development, Virtual Research and Development Centre, 2006
The global livestock sector is socially and politically very significant, creating livelihoods for one billion of the world’s poor and accounting for 40% of agricultural gross demestic product (GDP). This report finds that the value of the sector is countered by an often extremely high environmental impact. It reveals that livestock are one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.
The livestock sector is undergoing a complex process of change, with an increasing shift away from extensive rural grazing to intensive and urban or peri-urban animal faming. Through these shifts, the sector enters into more direct competition for scarce land, water, and other natural resources. Improved efficiency is a major aim, but the authors report that smallholders and pastoralists are being marginalised. Rather than dispersed pollution, waste streams are now new point-source, creating more local damage, but also with the potential to be better managed and regulated. The authors recommend that:
- a top priority is to achieve prices and fees that reflect the full economic and environmental costs, including all externalities
- there should be secure and if possible tradable rights to land, water, common property land and waste sinks
- damaging subsidies should be removed
- payments for environmental services is important, particularly in extensive grazing systems. Producers and landowners should be paid for maintaining and enhancing water flows, soil conservation, habitats, or carbon sequestration.
The report concludes that livestock should be a core focus of environmental policy, and that efforts invested here can have multiple benefits and payoffs. Fully realising this potential means that suitable institutional and policy frameworks at national and international levels need to be urgently developed and backed up by strong political commitment.
