| 1. |
- Cederberg, Christel, 1959, et al.
(författare)
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Including Carbon Emissions from Deforestation in the Carbon Footprint of Brazilian Beef
- 2011
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Ingår i: Environmental Science and Technology. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 0013-936X .- 1520-5851. ; 45:5, s. 1773-1779
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Effects of land use changes are starting to be included in estimates of life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, so-called carbon footprints (CFs), from food production. Their omission can lead to serious underestimates, particularly for meat. Here we estimate emissions from the conversion of forest to pasture in the Legal Amazon Region (LAR) of Brazil and present a model to distribute the emissions from deforestation over products and time subsequent to the land use change. Expansion of cattle ranching for beef production is a major cause of deforestation in the LAR. The carbon footprint of beef produced on newly deforested land is estimated at more than 700 kg CO2-equivalents per kg carcass weight if direct land use emissions are annualized over 20 years. This is orders of magnitude larger than the figure for beef production on established pasture on non-deforested land. While Brazilian beef exports have originated mainly from areas outside the LAR, i.e. from regions not subject to recent deforestation, we argue that increased production for export has been the key driver of the pasture expansion and deforestation in the LAR during the past decade and this should be reflected in the carbon footprint attributed to beef exports. We conclude that carbon footprint standards must include the more extended effects of land use changes to avoid giving misleading information to policy makers, retailers, and consumers.
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| 2. |
- Clift, Roland, 1942, et al.
(författare)
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Eco-labels and electric monks
- 2005
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Ingår i: Journal of Industrial Ecology. - 1530-9290 .- 1088-1980. ; 9:3, s. 4-7
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)
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| 3. |
- Clift, Roland, 1942, et al.
(författare)
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Managing Plastics: Uses, Losses and Disposal
- 2019
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Ingår i: Law, Environment and Development Journal. - 1746-5893. ; 15:2, s. 93-107
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The term ‘plastic’ refers to a wide range of different materials with diverse properties and uses. Plastics are essential in a modern industrial economy. Plastic pollution results from the ‘leakage’ of plastics into the unconfined environment at all stages of the product cycle, not just following use, so the highest priority to prevent continuing pollution is to ensure that all plastics remain within the economy. The ‘circular economy’ approach may reduce but cannot eliminate plastic pollution without effective measures to prevent leakage. Measures to prevent leakage must be based on understanding of how plastics are brought into and moved through the economy; of the practical options for reducing demand for fresh plastic, re-using and recycling plastic products, and managing final waste; and on prioritizing development of alternative materials for specific uses. Even if leakages of plastic into the environment are curtailed, the legacy of plastic pollution over the last seventy years will remain, particularly in the oceans. Marine plastic litter is a problem of the Global Commons and requires global action for its collection. Currently, landfilling of collected marine plastic debris is the only feasible option but, if economic uses can be found, this will partially offset future demand for fresh plastics.
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| 4. |
- Keller, Emma, et al.
(författare)
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Quantifying and managing GHG emissions in global agri-food supply chains: A case study on cocoa farming in Ghana.
- 2013
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Ingår i: 7th International Society for Industrial Ecology conference.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Agriculture contributes approximately a third of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Increasingly, food manufacturers and retailers are looking to use their controlling position in the agri-food supply chain to promote sustainability through improved farm management practices. One important mechanism to achieve this is through promoting consumer products certified by schemes, such as Rainforest Alliance or Fair-trade, among others. These schemes provide an assurance that certain general management standards are being met. However, these forms of certification rarely cover specific impacts such as contribution to climate change. Understanding the GHG impact of different farm management practices requires reliable and quantitative tools based on information which farmers can readily supply and providing results in a readily intelligible form. Such a tool should ideally be universally applicable, not just to food production in the developed world.This contribution describes an application of the ‘Cool Farm Tool’ developed at the University of Aberdeen for a consortium of food manufacturers (Hillier et al., 2011) for quantifying farm-level GHG emissions, to test its applicability on the developing world, specifically on cocoa farms in Ghana with different experiences of ‘sustainability’ and certification. The results suggest that environmentally certified farms have a lower GHG emission profile than non-certified farms and also provide some indication into the key practices driving the difference, particularly land-use change and provision of shade trees which sequester carbon. Furthermore, the case study highlights the challenges of using the tool with smallholders and the complexities of modelling the cocoa production system. The key insights are used to provide recommendations for improving the tool, the replicability of the approach at scale in a global food chain and the possible implications for certification design.
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