Mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from livestock: Complications, implication and new political ecologies

Abstract

In this chapter, we examine some nascent and tentative steps taken to mitigate GHGs from livestock production and the potential implications of these actions on the social and environmental systems within which livestock production occurs. To date, the mitigation of GHGs from livestock production has been directed toward establishing measurement and reporting frameworks for livestock-derived emissions and the fitful use of emissions trading as a regulatory instrument. These mitigation efforts direct farmers and pastoralists to incorporate a new matter of environmental concern – the direct and indirect production of GHGs from livestock – into the existing cognitive frameworks and regimes of practice that structure livestock production. Two challenges emerge from the growing concerns regarding GHGs from livestock for New Zealand. The first involves the social value of livestock production within New Zealand’s culture and the New Zealand economy’s reliance on the commodity production of meat and dairy products since the mid-nineteenth century. The second relates to the potential impact of efforts to mitigate GHGs upon wider social, economic, and ecological systems.