Hungary will introduce a fat tax as of September 1 2011. From this date, Hungarian food manufacturers will have to pay a tax of 10 forint (€0.37) for foods bearing fat, sugar and salt at levels over a certain threshold. The Hungarian government says the tax will raise €70m per year – money which it says will offset public health costs of treating the consequences of high-fat,sugar and salt diets.

Defra’s Centre of Expertise on Influencing Behaviours has published a Framework for Sustainable Lifestyles, a slide set as a tool to help develop effective approaches to encourage more sustainable lifestyles. This also enables Government improve the support given to organisations supporting sustainable lifestyles.The set builds on the 2008 Framework for Pro-environmental Behaviours and provides key insights from Defra's understanding of the evidence on people's behaviour. The Framework covers:

This report (Southerton D, McMeekin A and Evans D (2011). International review of behaviour change initiatives: Climate change behaviours research programme, Scottish Government) commissioned by the Scottish Government, reviews a range of behaviour change initiatives that have attempted to reduce the carbon intensity of consumption practices. It aims to enhance understandings of the different combinations of mechanisms for behavioural change, and to explore the potential transferability of initiatives to other regional, specifically Scottish, contexts.

This paper shows that the benefits for net carbon uptake by the biosphere arising from nitrogen fertilisation are offset by the emissions of nitrous oxide that result (Zaehle S, Ciais P, Friend A D and Prieur V (2011). Carbon benefits of anthropogenic reactive nitrogen offset by nitrous oxide emissions, Nature Geoscience)., doi:10.1038/ngeo1207). 

 This paper, the authors of which include several FCRN mailing list members, examines 'Protein efficiency per unit energy and per unit greenhouse gas emissions: Potential contribution of diet choices to climate change mitigation'. (González A D, Frostell B and Carlsson-Kanyama A (2011) Protein efficiency per unit energy and per unit greenhouse gas emissions: Potential contribution of diet choices to climate change mitigation, Food Policy doi:10.1016/j.foodpol.2011.07.003). Reference, abstract and conclusions copied as follows:

If you only read one report highlighted in this section – read this.  It’s a study commissioned by the Committee on Climate Change as supporting research for the publication of its latest Annual Report and is a really fascinating piece of work.  

The shipping industry has become the first global business sector to agree to mandatory carbon dioxide emissions reductions. At a meeting of the United Nations' International Maritime Organization, member countries agreed to set CO2 emissions standards on new ships beginning in 2019, with the goal of improving energy efficiency by 30% by 2024.