Curbing how much beef we eat is one of the most promising approaches to control our climate impact. But there are questions around where and how that should happen, since livestock is a critical source of protein for millions in many parts of the world.
Now a group of researchers pinpoint a possible solution: in a survey of global cattle pasturelands, they reveal that wealthy and middle-income countries hold the greatest potential to transform former grazing lands into carbon-sequestering habitats. In fact, reducing global cattle production by 13%—less than a fifth—and turning it over to nature in these places could lock away 125 gigatons of CO₂.
The findings align with growing consensus that richer countries should shoulder the burden of emissions cuts—a point the researchers didn’t set out to make, but which emerged organically from their data.
The New York University-led team began by scrutinizing a map of global cattle pastures, and the regional ecosystems they inhabit. This ecosystem overview gave them a sense of how much carbon each pasture could lock in, if it was returned to its native form, whether that was forests, scrubland, or natural grassland.
From these geographical comparisons, the scientists developed a metric they call ‘carbon opportunity intensity’ (COI). By this metric, a pasture that could be reforested would be able to lock away more carbon per hectare of land in old-growth trees and deep soils, and so therefore would have a high-COI ranking. On the other hand, a pasture that occurs in a natural grassland region, an ecosystem that holds comparatively less CO2, would rank lower on that scale.
Next, the researchers used remote sensing technology to measure how productive cattle grazing areas are across the world, and how much beef each could produce. This information helped them determine the potential trade-off between rewilding and cattle production—which is important, as it would be unwise to rewild vast swathes of pastureland that has a high carbon potential, if that would simultaneously displace huge amounts of cattle production that may be regionally important for people’s diets.
But as it turned out, their analysis revealed the opposite. In general, the researchers found that pasturelands with high carbon-storing potential occurred in countries where cattle productivity per acre of pasture land wasn’t extraordinarily high. These sweet-spots tend to exist in high- and middle-income countries, including the United States, China, and Europe.
One feature that might explain this dynamic is that these regions occur in higher latitudes where ecosystems like boreal forests are more common. These carbon-dense ecosystems could lock away considerably more if allowed to expand into rewilded pastureland. Meanwhile, pasturelands actually aren’t the most productive in these parts of the world—and so rewilding these lands wouldn’t displace too significant a share of the world’s beef.
Altogether the researchers calculate that if we focused rewilding in these high-income hotspots, it would lead to a 13% reduction in global beef, but in regions where it’s arguably not critical for nutrition. That would free up enough land to store 125 GtCO₂: that’s equivalent to three years’ worth of global carbon emissions that could be sequestered in restored lands, all while leaving cattle production elsewhere in the world—where in some places it may be essential—untouched.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be seeking to reduce beef consumption trends worldwide, the researchers caution. Nor should the carbon-sequestration potential of reforestation license the continued production of fossil fuels. The world needs a fleet of approaches to tackle climate change, they are careful to emphasize.
But increasingly, countries are turning to reforestation as another approach to help us mitigate the effects of climate change. The new findings may help pinpoint places where that could happen alongside efforts to curb the excess consumption of meat, the researchers hope.
“Within the next two decades, countries are aiming to meet critical climate mitigation targets under international agreements, and ecosystem restoration on converted pasturelands can be a critical part of that.”
Hayek et, al. “Opportunities for carbon sequestration from removing or intensifying pasture-based beef production.” PNAS. 2024.
Image: Ross Sokolovski on Unsplash
