By James Beresford, MSc Environmental Technology, Imperial College London.
Given the disconnect between the ecosystems that support the production of our food and the place of its consumption, embedded emissions in imported food, and the potential for emissions growth independent of production method, attempts to curtail the negative environmental impacts of the UK food system must also tackle consumption. A selection of fiscal and behavioural consumption management measures are explored and their impacts estimated.
The two most effective measures in terms of emission reductions are a Pigouvian greenhouse gas tax on meat products, with abatement between 3.9-11.7 Mt CO2e, and an extension of VAT to red meat products, resulting in abatement of 3.3 Mt CO2e. First estimates indicate that both measures would be cost-effective when compared to lost production except at low carbon prices.
All consumption management measures result in changes to annual per capita meat consumption of less than 3.5%, and will contribute to public health goals. The implications of such measures for food security and biodiversity are drawn out with the aid of a scenario of conservation grazing in the UK, and potential trade-offs are explored.
Substantial design challenges exist due to scientific uncertainty and lack of public support, while as a consequence of the globalised nature of the food system, all measures involve trade-offs across multiple spatial scales. In order to explore these fully global scenarios are required. Food policy concerned with food security and global environmental change should consider a range of consumption-orientated policies to create scope for encouraging diets to converge on realistic global production capacity within environmental limits.
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