What is it?
A group of organizations from the world of business and some NGOs have come together to explore how to feed 9 billion people enough protein in a way that is affordable, healthy and good for the environment.
Why?
Our current way of producing and eating protein is placing increasing burden on our land and sea resources. From land use to the methane released from cattle, agriculture activities contributes to environmental problems in many ways. With growing population, it is necessary to come up with sustainable ways to produce and consume protein without sacrificing the environment and the needs of future generations.
How?
The group is initiating a global conversation on sustainable protein and calling for expertise and ideas on ways to solve the challenge through improvement in six areas.
What are some of the foreseeable issues?
The first issue that comes to my mind is the long timeframe of the challenge. In order to avoid going beyond the 2C dangerous level of global warming in 2050, it requires actions today because there will be a time lag between our action and the result. It means that even if we are able to achieve sustainable protein by 2040, we will not be able to start seeing improvements in climate problems until five, six years after that.
On top of that is the issue of changing consumer behaviour. How quickly can we get the public to adopt the practice of producing and consuming sustainable protein? To effectively get the message across the globe, it requires collaboration of international governments, policy changes, education efforts, and global training. Moreover, we need to find ways to help sustainable protein compete with traditional protein and make a smooth transition without compromising on market efficiency.
Overall, I think the protein challenge has ambitious goals, but they are still at their concept stage. I look forward to seeing how the group plan to achieve these goals in an effective manner.
I have been thinking about the issue of meat consumption a lot recently, and have actually reduced my meat consumption to almost zero in the last few months. I guess I’m lucky that I barely miss/crave a good steak, and in fact, love beans/legumes much more. I think that the issues you raised in your post are all valid, but I wonder if there is another perspective of looking at them! Even if we were to achieve sustainable protein by 2040, or EVER, it would still be a positive in my opinion. Sure, we might go past the dangerous level of global warming, but better late than never right? I don’t mean to reduce the severity of the global warming issue, but if we don’t begin trying to change patterns now, we’ll probably exceed that dangerous level anyway.