High steaks : climate change mitigation in the cattle sector

Abstract

Increasingly, the environmental impact of animal agriculture is being recognised. In the past, climate criticism was largely reserved for the fossil fuel sector, or even the transport and aviation sectors. However, now it is being realised that the agricultural sector is also a major contributor to climate change, particularly in terms of livestock production. Despite this, little attention has been paid, either in academic writing or in policy making, to improving the climate impacts of the livestock sector. This thesis begins to address this gap. Using a novel critical frame analysis approach, it seeks to provide a broad macro-level analysis of various legal regimes on the international and European level that affect emissions from cattle (and where relevant, livestock more broadly). On the basis of this critical frame analysis, tensions, synergies and common themes for livestock emissions mitigation across these regimes can be identified and investigated. It is hoped that this can help to strengthen productive synergies and to reduce damaging tensions while promoting fairer and more effective emissions mitigation for the sector. Most importantly, the thesis highlights affluence as the ‘forgotten’ problem in reducing cattle emissions. The importance of this key insight in terms of tackling future livestock emissions trajectories is significant, particularly in relation to the climate justice dimension of climate mitigation.