In a guest post for Carbon brief University of Leeds professor of population ecology and FCRN advisory board member Tim Benton and Dr Bojana Bajželj of WRAP conclude that food related emissions will take up our entire carbon budget by 2050 if we don’t change our diets and the way our food is produced, so destroying any chance of meeting the raised ambition of the Paris Agreement.

In "Life cycle measures of biophysical sustainability in feed production for conventional and organic salmon aquaculture in the northeast pacific" it was found that the cumulative impacts of industrial society's high material/energy throughput compromise the stability of planetary biogeochemical cycles.

A new joint report by World Bank, FAO and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) entitled "Fish to 2030: Prospects for Fisheries and Aquaculture” looks at prospects for fisheries and aquaculture and suggests that aquaculture will provide close to two thirds of global food fish consumption by 2030. It highlights the continuing role of  China as a major driver of aquaculture demand, and charts the decline in the relative importance of capture fisheries.

The launch of the new vegetarian alternative to the meatballs – grönsaksbullar - is what Ikea calls “the first step to include a wider variety of healthier and more sustainable food choices”.

This paper looks at China’s National Forest Conservation Program (NFCP) and concludes that overall, it has been successful in reforesting the country. Prior to this study, scientists did not have proof of China’s claims of forest growth and the effectiveness of the program and China has been under international pressure to scientifically report their findings.

Ten years after the first Year Book in this series appeared, a special e-book anniversary edition – UNEP Year Book 2014 – presents a fresh look at ten issues highlighted over the past decade.

Consumers influence climate change through their consumption patterns and their support or dismissal of climate mitigation policy measures. Both climate-friendly actions and policy support comprise a broad range of options, which vary in manifold ways and, therefore, might be influenced by different factors.

A study published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science reviews the Database on Raising Intelligence to find interventions that increased children’s intelligence. One such intervention involved supplementing infants with long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, and the study concludes that this does indeed have a positive impact on children’s IQ. 

A paper published in the journal Annual Review of Environment and Resources explores the connection between climate change and food systems, and assesses and the impact the former willl have on agricultural yields and earnings, food prices, reliability of delivery, food quality and food safety. It also discusses a number of interventions that could mitigate this impact.