Source: Ex-officials at UN farming body say work on methane emissions was censored | Food | The Guardian
Arthur NeslenFri 20 Oct 2023 06.00 EDT
Former officials in the UN’s farming wing have said they were censored, sabotaged, undermined and victimised for more than a decade after they wrote about the hugely damaging contribution of methane emissions from livestock to global heating.
Team members at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) tasked with estimating cattle’s contribution to soaring temperatures said that pressure from farm-friendly funding states was felt throughout the FAO’s Rome headquarters and coincided with attempts by FAO leadership to muzzle their work.
The allegations date back to the years after 2006, when some of the officials who spoke exclusively to the Guardian on condition of anonymity wrote Livestock’s Long Shadow (LLS), a landmark report that pushed farm emissions on to the climate agenda for the first time. LLS included the first tally of the meat and dairy sector’s ecological cost, attributing 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions to livestock, mostly cattle. It shocked an industry that had long seen the FAO as a reliable ally – and spurred an internal clampdown by FAO hierarchy, according to the officials.
The Guardian conducted in-depth interviews with about 20 former and current FAO officials, and corroborated their accounts as far as possible. Speaking anonymously, the officials described a culture in which attempts to probe the connection between livestock and climate change were discouraged and, in some cases, suppressed, and where management attempted to sabotage research and research networks. Henning Steinfeld, the head of the FAO’s livestock analysis unit, said that diplomats and meat lobbyists talked to senior FAO managers and encouraged them not to invest in work that dealt with environmental impacts.
“It’s not that anyone would come to you and say: ‘Stop this! We don’t like this work,’” the source said, describing the working environment. “They would just make your work difficult. They would not invite you to a meeting with a donor. You would not get a slot when you should be speaking. You would not get the support from project development, from capacity building, from all kinds of other units in the FAO that others would get.”
Jennifer Jacquet, professor of environmental science at the University of Miami, suggested it was “no coincidence” that the FAO had rowed back on its appraisal of farm emissions, given the pressures recounted by former officials. “It’s a story as old as time, that the meat and dairy industry has enormous influence over the policymaking apparatus,” she said.
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