Demographic Scenarios of Future Environmental Footprints of Healthy Diets in China.

Aixi Han,Li Chai,Xiawei Liao

doi:10.3390/foods9081021

Aixi Han, Li Chai + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/foods9081021

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Abstract

Dietary improvement not only benefits human health conditions, but also offers the potential to reduce the human food system’s environmental impact. With the world’s largest population and people’s bourgeoning lifestyle, China’s food system is set to impose increasing pressures on the environment. We evaluated the minimum environmental footprints, including carbon footprint (CF), water footprint (WF) and ecological footprint (EF), of China’s food systems into 2100. The minimum footprints of healthy eating are informative to policymakers when setting the environmental constraints for food systems. The results demonstrate that the minimum CF, WF and EF all increase in the near future and peak around 2030 to 2035, under different population scenarios. After the peak, population decline and aging result in decreasing trends of all environmental footprints until 2100. Considering age-gender specific nutritional needs, the food demands of teenagers in the 14–17 year group require the largest environmental footprints across the three indicators. Moreover, men’s nutritional needs also lead to larger environmental footprints than women’s across all age groups. By 2100, the minimum CF, WF and EF associated with China’s food systems range from 616 to 899 million tons, 654 to 953 km3 and 6513 to 9500 billion gm2 respectively under different population scenarios. This study builds a bridge between demography and the environmental footprints of diet and demonstrates that the minimum environmental footprints of diet could vary by up to 46% in 2100 under different demographic scenarios. The results suggest to policymakers that setting the environmental constraints of food systems should be integrated with the planning of a future demographic path.

Highlights

IntroductionTo ensuring food security is commonly recognized as a global challenge, the United Nations has set “Ending hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture” as the second of its seventeen Sustainable Development Goals for the year 2030 [1]
To ensuring food security is commonly recognized as a global challenge, the United Nations has set “Ending hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture” as the second of its seventeen Sustainable Development Goals for the year 2030 [1].By 2050, the world needs to feed nine billion people with food demand being 60% higher than it is today [2]
According to China’s dietary guidelines, we evaluate the environmental benefits of food pattern change of the Chinese population and demonstrate that while population growth may play the primary role in driving the increasing environmental footprints associated with the food system in the near future, food pattern change offers potentials to offset such impacts and result in net decreases of food system’s environmental impacts after the 2030s.It should be noted that the guidelines represent the minimal energy and nutrition intakes that are recommended for age and gender-specific groups, the average Chinese person’s current diet has not reached the recommended levels and may have a smaller environmental footprint than our results

Summary

Introduction

To ensuring food security is commonly recognized as a global challenge, the United Nations has set “Ending hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture” as the second of its seventeen Sustainable Development Goals for the year 2030 [1]. By 2050, the world needs to feed nine billion people with food demand being 60% higher than it is today [2]. With the largest population in the world, China’s food security plays an important role in underpinning its social and economic development. China set a goal of complete self-sufficiency for grains and basic self-sufficiency for meat, eggs, milk, and vegetables as early as 1996 [3]. The food system accounts for more than 25% of global greenhouse gas (GHG)

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