全球智库信息集成服务系统(G2TT): Global environmental costs of China's thirst for milk.

G2TT

来源类型	Article
规范类型	其他
DOI	10.1111/gcb.14047
	Global environmental costs of China's thirst for milk.
	Bai Z; Lee MRF; Ma Lin; Ledgard S; Oenema O; Velthof GL; Ma W; Guo M
发表日期	2018
出处	Global Change Biology 24 (5): 2198-2211
出版年	2018
语种	英语
摘要	China has an ever-increasing thirst for milk, with a predicted 3.2-fold increase in demand by 2050 compared to the production level in 2010. What are the environmental implications of meeting this demand, and what is the preferred pathway? We addressed these questions by using a nexus approach, to examine the interdependencies of increasing milk consumption in China by 2050 and its global impacts, under different scenarios of domestic milk production and importation. Meeting China's milk demand in a business as usual scenario will increase global dairy-related (China and the leading milk exporting regions) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 35% (from 565 to 764 Tg CO2eq) and land use for dairy feed production by 32% (from 84 to 111 million ha) compared to 2010, while reactive nitrogen losses from the dairy sector will increase by 48% (from 3.6 to 5.4 Tg nitrogen). Producing all additional milk in China with current technology will greatly increase animal feed import; from 1.9 to 8.5 Tg for concentrates and from 1.0 to 6.2 Tg for forage (alfalfa). In addition, it will increase domestic dairy related GHG emissions by 2.2 times compared to 2010 levels. Importing the extra milk will transfer the environmental burden from China to milk exporting countries; current dairy exporting countries may be unable to produce all additional milk due to physical limitations or environmental preferences/legislation. For example, the farmland area for cattle-feed production in New Zealand would have to increase by more than 57% (1.3 million ha) and that in Europe by more than 39% (15 million ha), while GHG emissions and nitrogen losses would increase roughly proportionally with the increase of farmland in both regions. We propose that a more sustainable dairy future will rely on high milk demanding regions (such as China) improving their domestic milk and feed production efficiencies up to the level of leading milk producing countries. This will decrease the global dairy related GHG emissions and land use by 12% (90 Tg CO2eq reduction) and 30% (34 million ha land reduction) compared to the business as usual scenario, respectively. However, this still represents an increase in total GHG emissions of 19% whereas land use will decrease by 8% when compared with 2010 levels, respectively.
主题	Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM)
关键词	cattle feed greenhouse gas land use, nitrogen losses milk trade shared socio-economic pathways scenarios
URL	http://pure.iiasa.ac.at/id/eprint/15109/
来源智库	International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Austria)
引用统计
资源类型	智库出版物
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/131451
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Bai Z,Lee MRF,Ma Lin,et al. Global environmental costs of China's thirst for milk.. 2018.