Dear Mayors,<\/p>\n
Scientific consensus of currently observed and projected future climate and biodiversity impacts clearly calls for the rapid transformation of our society at all scales and across all sectors, in order to maintain a safe climate and planet for the future of humanity.<\/p>\n
City leaders play a crucial role in advancing innovative solutions that improve the well-being of citizens while contributing to maintaining a safe climate and planet for future generations (1). One such form of innovative solutions relate to urban food policies, which offer win-win options to improve public health in urban centres and at the same time greatly contribute to reducing climate emissions both in rural and urban areas.<\/p>\n
The greenhouse gas footprint of livestock products is approximately 10\u2013100 times greater than plant-based foods (2). Reducing over-consumption of livestock products would greatly reduce the environmental impacts of food production (3). For example, it has recently been shown that a sixth of the carbon footprint of average diets in Europe is due to tropical deforestation emissions (4). Meat and dairy production require large amounts of feed which often is produced from cropland expanding into newly deforested land (5).<\/p>\n
While hunger and under nutrition remain a critical global issue, malnutrition is increasingly becoming a problem: dietary changes from current diets to healthy diets are likely to potentially avoid about 10 million deaths per year (10.8\u201311.6 million deaths per year, a reduction of 19.0\u201323.6%) (6).<\/p>\n
Studies show that it is not necessary for humans to become vegetarian or vegan to have significant impacts on climate change and food security – a shift globally towards healthy diets would greatly reduce the adverse environmental impacts of food production, and would also benefit human health (7).<\/p>\n
City leaders all over the world are moving ahead with ambitious urban food policies.<\/p>\n
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams recently announced that all 1,700 NYC public schools will serve meatless meals every Monday: more than 1.1 million students will have a vegetarian meal every week.<\/p>\n
In Lille, France, the school menu offers two meals weekly without meat or fish a week in the canteens of its public schools. The Lille school district serves about 14,000 meals a day. Since 2014, the city of Lille already implemented one vegetarian menu per week in its canteens.<\/p>\n
In Mexico, Veracruz\u2019s \u201cCome Consciente\u201d program launched in April 2018 requires that all schools in the state of Veracruz (the second-largest state in Mexico) serve plant-based meals on Mondays.<\/p>\n
In the coming days, hundreds of cities will take part in the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact annual conference in Montpellier, France, and the C40 annual conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. To create a future that is healthy for both citizens and the planet, we call on Mayors today to reduce meat in the meals served in our public canteens and to increase plant-based foods.<\/p>\n
As scientists working for the public good, we are ready to provide you with further scientific evidence about these important topics during the forthcoming C40 and the MUFPP meetings and beyond.<\/p>\n
Sincerely,<\/p>\n
Pete Smith, Professor of Soils & Global Change, University of Aberdeen, UK. FRS, FRSE, FNA, FRSB<\/p>\n
Bojana Baj\u017eelj, Researcher, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
\nAndrew Balmford, Professor, University of Cambridge, UK
\nS\u00e9bastien Barot, Research Director, Institut de Recherche pour le D\u00e9veloppement, France
\nPriska Baur, Researcher, Institute of Natural Resource Sciences, Switzerland
\nLaurent B\u00e8gue, Professor, University Grenoble Alpes \/ CNRS, France
\nElena Bennet, Professor, McGill University, Canada
\nLeroux Beno\u00eet, Researcher, Universit\u00e9 de Poitiers – GRESCO, France
\nTim Benton, Professor, University of Leeds, UK
\nMike Berners-Lee, Professor, Lancaster University, UK
\nAlberto Bernu\u00e9s, Researcher, Agrifood Research and Technology Centre of Aragon, Spain
\nGilles Billen, Research Director, CNRS\/Sorbonne University, France
\nAlberte Bondeau, Researcher, CNRS, France
\nGilles Brunschwig, Professor, VetAgroSup, France
\nSophie Caillon, Researcher, CNRS, France
\nRoland Cash, Researcher, Ascl\u00e9piades, France
\nIsabelle Champion, Researcher, INRA, France
\nYves Chilliard, Research Director, INRA, France
\nWolfgang Cramer, Professor, CNRS (IMBE), France
\nEmilie Dardenne, Researcher, Universit\u00e9 Rennes 2, France
\nMiguel Delibes, Professor, Do\u00f1ana Biological Station \/ CSIC, Spain
\nMarion Desquilbet, Researcher, Toulouse School of Economics and INRA, France
\nSophie Devienne, Professor, AgroParisTech, France
\nJulio D\u00edaz, Researcher, Carlos III Institute of Health, Spain
\nMari Cruz D\u00edaz Barradas, Professor, University of Seville, Spain
\nRodolfo Dirzo, Professor, Stanford University, USA
\nMarc Dufumier, Professor, AgroParisTech, France
\nMichel Duru, Researcher, INRA, France
\nJan P. Ehlers, Professor, Witten\/Herdecke University, Germany
\nLaure Emperaire, Researcher, Institut de Recherche pour le D\u00e9veloppement, France
\nEve Fouilleux, Research Director, CNRS – University Paris Est, France
\nTara Garnett, Researcher, University of Oxford, UK
\nRosemary Green, Professor, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK
\nHelen Harwatt, Researcher, Harvard Law School, UK
\nMatthew Hayek, Professor, New York University, USA
\nHans R. Herren, Researcher, Biovision, Switzerland
\nVincent Hilomen, Professor, University of the Philippines Los Ba\u00f1os, the Philippines
\nElise Huchard, Researcher, CNRS, France
\nHans-Peter Hutter, Professor, Medical University of Vienna, Austria
\nFr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Joly, Researcher, INRA, France
\nFr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Le Manach, Researcher, Bloom, France
\nJens Lund, Professor, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
\nJennie Macdiarmid, Professor, University of Aberdeen, UK
\nRapha\u00ebl Manlay, Researcher, AgroParisTech, France
\nMarie-Claude Marsolier-Kergoat, Researcher, CEA\/Mus\u00e9um National d’Histoire Naturelle, France
\nSandrine Mathy, Researcher, CNRS, France
\nAdrian M\u00fcller, Researcher, Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, FiBL, Switzerland
\nLucie Najak, Researcher, Inserm, France
\nMercedes Pardo-Buend\u00eda, Professor, University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain
\nJared Piazza, Researcher, Lancaster University, UK
\nJoseph Poore, Researcher, University of Oxford, UK
\nPrajal Pradhan, Researcher, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany
\nWilliam Ripple, Distinguished Professor, Oregon State University, USA
\nMarta Guadalupe Rivera-Ferre, Researcher, University of Vic-Central University of Catalonia, Spain
\nElin R\u00f6\u00f6s, Researcher, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
\nAntonio Ruiz de Elvira, Professor, University of Alcal\u00e1, Spain
\nPeter Birch S\u00f8rensen, Professor, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
\nMarco Springmann, Researcher, University of Oxford, UK
\nDavid Suzuki, Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia, Canada
\nNicolas Treich, Researcher, Toulouse School of Economics and INRA, France
\nFernando Valladares, Professor, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cient\u00edficas, Spain
\nIsabelle Veissier, Researcher, INRA, France
\nJ\u00e9r\u00e9my Vend\u00e9, Researcher, AgroParisTech, France
\nPaul West, Researcher, Global Landscapes Initiative, Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota, USA
\nStephen Whybrow, Researcher, University of Aberdeen, UK<\/p>\n
Note: Signatories speak on their own behalf, and not on behalf of their affiliated institutions.<\/p>\n
(1) Bertoldi, P., Kona, A., Rivas, S. & Dallemand, J. F. 2018. Towards a global comprehensive and transparent framework for cities and local governments enabling an effective contribution to the Paris climate agreement. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 30, 67-74.
\nIPBES 2019. Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
\n(2) Clark, M. & Tilman, D. 2017. Comparative analysis of environmental impacts of agricultural production systems, agricultural input efficiency, and food choice. Environmental Research Letters 12, 064016.
\nPoore, J. & Nemecek, T. 2018. Reducing food\u2019s environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science, 360: 987.
\n(3) Baj\u017eelj B., Richards K.S., Allwood J.M., Smith P., Dennis J.S., Curmi E. & Gilligan C.A. 2014. The importance of food demand management for climate mitigation. Nature Climate Change 4, 924\u2013929.
\nTilman, D. & Clark, M. 2014. Global diets link environmental sustainability and human health. Nature 515, 518\u2013522.
\n(4) Pendrill, F., Persson, U.M., Godar, J., Kastner, T., Moran, D., Schmidt, S. & Wood, R. 2019. Agricultural and forestry trade drives large share of tropical deforestation emissions. Global Environmental Change, 56, 1-10.
\n(5) Smith, P. 2018. Managing the global land resource. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285: 20172798.
\n(6) Data from the latest Eat-Lancet Commission on Planetary Health: Willett, W., Rockstr\u00f6m, J., Loken, B., Springmann, M., Lang, T., Vermeulen, S., Garnett, T., Tilman, D., DeClerck, F., Wood, A., Jonell, M., Clark, M., Gordon, L. J., Fanzo, J., Hawkes, C., Zurayk, R., Rivera, J. A., De Vries, W., Majele Sibanda, L., Afshin, A., Chaudhary, A., Herrero, M., Agustina, R., Branca, F., Lartey, A., Fan, S., Crona, B., Fox, E., Bignet, V., Troell, M., Lindahl, T., Singh, S., Cornell, S. E., Srinath Reddy, K., Narain, S., Nishtar, S. & Murray, C. J. L. 2019. Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT\u2013Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems. The Lancet, 393, 447-492.
\n(7) Smith, P. 2018. Managing the global land resource. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285: 20172798.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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