Previously published in EJIL:Talk! Blog of the European Journal of International Law

States had little interest in committing to such a transition. When they spoke of ‘transitioning away’, they meant fossil fuels, not meat. The closing document of the 2023 COP had called on states to contribute to ‘Transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems’ to achieve net zero by 2050. In Baku, states were bogged down in discussions about whether or not to reaffirm this ambition. For most states, the proposal to transition away from fossil fuels and animal protein was over the top.

The problem of meat overconsumption

Nonetheless, there are good reasons for ‘transitioning away’ from overconsumption of animal protein, particularly meat. Leaving aside whether there is overconsumption of meat in the sense that most people eat more meat than they need, there certainly is overconsumption in terms of externalities. The livestock sector contributes approximately 14.5% of global human-caused greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, driven by methane emissions from cows, land-use changes, and feed production. All (increasingly hypothetical) scenarios for keeping the 1.5°C and even the 2.0°C warming targets within reach require significant reductions of such emissions.

This is particularly important because methane reductions have a much greater potential for quick wins than reductions of fossil fuels. As methane has a shorter atmospheric lifespan than carbon dioxide, cutting methane emissions can relatively quickly lower atmospheric concentrations and slow global warming.

Moreover, reducing meat overconsumption would serve other key global public interests. On 17 December, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) published the Nexus report, concluding that reducing meat overconsumption would simultaneously support six sustainable development goals. It can bring significant global health benefits by lowering the rate of antibiotic resistance and non-communicable disease in humans (as underlined in the FAO’s recent  The State of Food and Agriculture 2024) and help to protect biodiversity (30% of all land on earth is used for pastures and feeds). Reducing meat overconsumption is also imperative for mitigating what Yuval Noah Hariri called ‘one of the worst crimes in history’: the suffering of billions of sentient species in the industrialised livestock industry.

‘Transitioning away’ does not mean ending. Also the commitment of COP 28 to transitioning away from fossil fuels to achieve net zero by 2050 is not a commitment to phase out fossil fuels entirely – if that were even possible at all. That holds even more for transitioning away from overconsumption of meat. Such a transition will never be a phasing out. Any scenario where large parts of the world’s population would live without consuming meat is a fantasy. What transitioning away from overconsumption should mean is a gradual shift to replacing animal protein with plant-based proteins on a scale where the current adverse effects on the climate, biodiversity, global health and animal welfare are substantially reduced.

Legal parallels between fossil fuel and meat

From an international law perspective, meat has much in common with fossil fuels. The due diligence obligation of all states to prevent significant harm to other states and areas beyond national jurisdiction—which many states that in the recent hearing appeared before the ICJ found applicable to climate change—applies similarly to emissions from carbon dioxide and methane. The same holds for the obligations under the Paris Agreement, the Law of the Sea Convention, and human rights conventions.

Applying these obligations to meat can involve a range of measures that can reduce meat consumption. These include enhancing consumer awareness, changing social norms, improving availability and access to alternatives, labelling, pricing, subsidies, and fiscal policies. Denmark’s recent introduction of a carbon tax on cows is an illustration.

Like fossil fuel, transitioning away from the overconsumption of meat requires differentiation between states and regions. What is specifically required depends on the local context and the mix of different types of GHG emissions in any particular state. Transitioning away from overconsumption of meat (with obvious consequences for production) would require more from the USA, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, China and EU member states than, say, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pacific Island states. Moreover, the principle of common but differentiated responsibility applies fully; the qualifier that transitioning away should be just and equitable applies just as well to meat as to fossil fuels.

Impediments

A naïve observer might think implementing the due diligence obligation in relation to meat should be much simpler than for fossil fuels. The push towards transitioning away from fossil fuels involves the development of advanced and sometimes costly technologies. It also requires access to and use of critical minerals, making the energy transition a key battlefield for the geopolitical power struggle. In contrast, transitioning away from excessive meat consumption seems relatively straightforward. In the same way that governments have prohibited or limited the sale or advertising of tobacco products, they could make rules about the sale, price, and advertising of animal meat products. Little would be required in terms of technology, and the geopolitical ramifications would be minimal.

Paradoxically, progress in reducing meat overconsumption turns out to be exceedingly more difficult than progress in transitioning away from fossil fuels. Even the otherwise highly optimistic Hannah Ritchie recognised in her discussion with Ezra Klein that optimism is less justified for the protein transition than for the energy transition.

One difficulty is that, for many people, meat is not a problem but rather a solution, given the lack of nutritious meals. This is particularly true for the Global South—approximately 60% of rural households in low—and middle-income countries depend on livestock. Normatively, this translates into a clash between climate change obligations and the right to food.

Moreover, overconsumption of meat is, like fossil fuel, a systemic issue deeply rooted in societal structures. It is shaped by economic systems that make cheap meat widely available, cultural norms that make meat a deeply ingrained part of diets and social practices, and corporate influence (marketing, advertisement, lobbying and market control by meat producers marginalizes plant-based alternatives).

The fate of the TAPP proposal

These factors help explain the sorry fate of the TAPP Coalition’s proposal. The proposal received the signatures of six African states (Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Uganda). A late encounter with a South Pacific Regional Environment Programme representative brought another 21 signatures from small island developing states.

The fact that only so few signatures could be collected confirms the low priority states have given to reducing methane emissions from livestock. It may seem encouraging that 159 states signed the Global Methane Pledge (initially adopted at COP 26) and committed themselves to reducing methane emissions by at least 30% from 2020 levels by 2030. However, the implementation of this Pledge has focussed mainly on methane emissions from oil, gas, and waste sectors rather than food systems. While over 90% of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement include methane emissions within their targets, only 16 states have established targets to reduce methane emissions in the agricultural sector.

To the extent that the process of the Methane Pledge does focus on meat production, it is on improving efficiency and reducing emissions rather than decreasing meat consumption. Much faith is put in the so-called Enteric Fermentation R&D Accelerator. This instrument is as technical as it sounds: it should reduce methane emissions by developing new feed additives, selective cattle breeding, and vaccines that reduce methane.

These technological fixes double down on the dominant image of human societies using non-human animals as economic things rather than sentient species. While these fixes may help to reduce methane emissions, they would operate in a silo and do no nothing to serve the broader interests of global health, biodiversity and animal welfare.

The path forward

In this rather bleak situation, international institutions may appear unlikely candidates to contribute to a transition away from the overconsumption of meat. After all, they depend on the same states that resist such a transition.

Nonetheless, an international institutional and regulatory environment is critical for transforming the global food system. Governed by long-term mandates and multilateral agreements rather than short-term political shifts in individual countries, international institutions can pursue forward-looking strategies without being directly influenced by frequent changes in national governments. They can address systemic issues underlying the overconsumption of meat by influencing market dynamics, providing policy frameworks that can be adopted nationally and locally, create trust that rules and standards are applied fairly to all stakeholders, and address distributional issues entrenched in global and local meat production systems.

In recent years, multiple international institutions have started to leverage their global influence, expertise, and resources to support a transition away from the overconsumption of meat. The ‘global governance complex’ that has emerged is highly fragmented, and much can be gained by improving coordination. However, the individual components of this complex are important. These include the FAO’s work on making global hidden costs of agrifood systems visible (read The State of Food and Agriculture 2024), the World Bank’s strategic framework to mitigate the agrifood system’s contributions to climate change, detailing affordable and readily available measures that can cut nearly a third of the world’s planet heating emissions while ensuring global food security (read the 2024 Recipe for a Livable Planet), the initiatives under the Biodiversity Convention which seek to protect biodiversity from industrial agriculture, the support for the One Health framework provided by the Quadripartite (in which the FAO, the World Health Organization, the World Organisation for Animal Health and the United Nations Environment Programme cooperare), the WTO Trade and Environmental Sustainability Structured Discussions that slowly start to address the fundamental problem of subsidies to agriculture, and the ongoing work of the second EAT-Lancet  Commission (EAT-Lancet 2.0) on healthy diets from sustainable food systems.

These initiatives are relevant for the future discussions of meat by in the climate change COPs. Reducing the overconsumption of meat is not only necessary for meeting the Paris targets but is also, and perhaps even more so, critical for achieving several other global interests. The COP will not act alone but is embedded in a complex of other institutions already paving a path. Given the urgency of meeting the Paris targets, the climate change COP can help accelerate the process.

The UNFCCC Secretariat, thus, would be well advised to include on the agenda of the next COPs an item calling on states to recognise that the net zero target of 2050 requires not only transitioning away from fossil fuels but also overconsumption of meat and that this requires that their NDCs include specific targets to reduce methane emissions from livestock. The next option for doing so is COP 30 in 2025. Given Brazil’s position on the list of meat-producing and consuming states, perhaps 2026 is a better prospect, if the decision is taken that this will be co-hosted by Pacific island states that already supported the TAPP Coalition proposal.

André Nollkaemper