Wild meat consumption in tropical forests spares a significant carbon footprint from the livestock production sector

André Valle Nunes,Martin Reinhardt Nielsen,Carlos A. Peres,Erich Fischer,Pedro de Araujo Lima Constantino

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-98282-4

Abstract

Whether sustainable or not, wild meat consumption is a reality for millions of tropical forest dwellers. Yet estimates of spared greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from consuming wild meat, rather than protein from the livestock sector, have not been quantified. We show that a mean per capita wild meat consumption of 41.7 kg yr−1 for a population of ~ 150,000 residents at 49 Amazonian and Afrotropical forest sites can spare ~ 71 MtCO2-eq annually under a bovine beef substitution scenario, but only ~ 3 MtCO2-eq yr−1 if this demand is replaced by poultry. Wild meat offtake by these communities could generate US$3M or US$185K in carbon credit revenues under an optimistic scenario (full compliance with the Paris Agreement by 2030; based on a carbon price of US$50/tCO2-eq) and US$1M or US$77K under a conservative scenario (conservative carbon price of US$20.81/tCO2-eq), representing considerable incentives for forest conservation and potential revenues for local communities. However, the wild animal protein consumption of ~ 43% of all consumers in our sample was below the annual minimum per capita rate required to prevent human malnutrition. We argue that managing wild meat consumption can serve the interests of climate change mitigation efforts in REDD + accords through avoided GHG emissions from the livestock sector, but this requires wildlife management that can be defined as verifiably sustainable.

Highlights

Whether sustainable or not, wild meat consumption is a reality for millions of tropical forest dwellers
Arguing that the sale of carbon credits based on carbon emissions forgone from livestock production can generate incentives to enhance tropical forest resource monitoring and management, we suggest that verifiably sustainable subsistence consumption of wild meat should be incorporated into future REDD + compensation schemes and climate change mitigation efforts
A total of 250 terrestrial taxa were harvested across all 49 study sites, including 27 species in the Amazonian and 22 in the Afrotropical region

Summary

Introduction

Wild meat consumption is a reality for millions of tropical forest dwellers. We argue that managing wild meat consumption can serve the interests of climate change mitigation efforts in REDD + accords through avoided GHG emissions from the livestock sector, but this requires wildlife management that can be defined as verifiably sustainable. The alternative of supplying meat demand through local beef production from ruminant livestock involves deforestation, with strikingly detrimental repercussions for both biodiversity conservation and carbon e missions[19]. The expansion of the livestock production sector in tropical forest countries to supply the growing demand for red meat is a crucial driver of both biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions[22,23]. Coupling conservation of biodiversity and natural ecosystem services such as carbon storage with global scale food production for a growing human population requiring ever more animal protein is, among the most critical challenges facing humanity today[28]

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