PBL (Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency) has published a new study which assesses the effects of present European meat, dairy and fish dietary consumption on biodiversity, land use and GHG emissions. The study has also developed a series of scenarios that model the effects of possible dietary and other shifts on global land use and GHG emissions by means of coupled macro-economic and environmental models. Regarding the present situation the main findings are:

Growth in emission transfers via international trade from 1990 to 2008 (Peters G P, Minx J C, Weber C L and Edenhofer (2011) PNAS) demonstrates the need to consider the embedded emissions in imports when assessing a country’s contribution to GHG emissions. This paper finds that for developed countries, the embedded emissions in imports have increased faster than national-territory emissions, and that most of these are a result of non-energy intensive manufacturing.

The Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE) has published a major study into the status of climate change legislation in 16 of the world’s largest economies. The study, completed in partnership with the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics, the following findings: Legislation is being advanced, to varying degrees, in all of the study countries Most of the legislative activity has taken place over the last year and a half – contrasting sharply with the difficulties experienced by the international negotiations over the same timeframe

Plenary Lecture by Joe Millward and Tara Garnett, given at the Conference on ‘Over- and undernutrition: challenges and approaches’ published in Proceedings of the Nutrition Society.