If our carbon footprint is to be audited, let’s get the metrics right first
There is growing talk of the need for a new environmental audit system in addition to the familiar financial audits for companies; and firms like EY are gearing up to administer this. But right now, we don’t have a sufficiently robust system of measurement and evaluation that can be agreed globally.
This was one of the game-changing things identified at a recent UN Food Systems Summit ‘Dialogue’ convened by Meat & Livestock Australia, Global Meat Alliance and the International Meat Secretariat. Given the prevalence in the media of spurious or misleading claims about the environmental footprint of meat, it’s important that there should be an unbiased nutritional / environmental index that takes into account human and planetary health as well as fully accounting for both sides of the carbon ledger. This would include both emissions and the carbon that’s taken out of the atmosphere and stored in grazing lands.
If people are to be guided to change their diets based on environmental measures, they must be given the net impact on both their health and the health of the planet.
