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Nutritional, environmental and economic impacts of ultra-processed food consumption in Australia
- Navoda Nirmani Liyanapathirana, Amanda Grech, Mengyu Li, Arunima Malik, Rosilene Ribeiro, Timur Burykin, Manfred Lenzen, David Raubenheimer
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- Journal:
- Public Health Nutrition / Volume 26 / Issue 12 / December 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 26 October 2023, pp. 3359-3369
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Objective:
To quantify the full life cycle impacts of ultra-processed foods (UPF) for key environmental, economic and nutritional indicators to identify trade-offs between UPF contribution to broad-scope sustainability.
Design:Using 24-h dietary recalls along with an input–output database for the Australian economy, dietary environmental and economic impacts were quantified in this national representative cross-sectional analysis. Food items were classified into non-UPF and UPF using the NOVA system, and dietary energy contribution from non-UPF and UPF fractions in diets was estimated. Thereafter, associations between nutritional, environmental and economic impacts of non-UPF and UPF fractions of diets were examined using a multi-dimensional nutritional geometry representation.
Setting:National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey 2011–2012 of Australia.
Participants:Respondents (n 5344) aged > 18 years with 1 d of 24-h dietary recall data excluding respondents with missing values and outlier data points and under reporters.
Results:Australian diets rich in UPF were associated with reduced nutritional quality, high greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, and increased employment and income associated with the food supply chains. The environmental and economic impacts associated with the UPF portion of diets become more distinct when the diets are standardised to average protein recommendation.
Conclusion:Increased consumption of UPF has socio-economic benefits, but this comes with adverse effects on the environment and public health. Consideration of such trade-offs is important in identifying policy and other mechanisms regarding UPF for establishing healthy and sustainable food systems.
Global environmental and social spillover effects of EU's food trade
- Arunima Malik, Guillaume Lafortune, Salma Dahir, Zachary A. Wendling, Christian Kroll, Sarah Carter, Mengyu Li, Manfred Lenzen
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- Journal:
- Global Sustainability / Volume 6 / 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 13 March 2023, e6
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Non-technical summary
Globalisation has narrowed the gap between producers and consumers. Nations are increasingly relying on commodities produced outside of their borders for satisfying their consumption. This is particularly the case for the European Union (EU). This study assesses spillover effects, i.e. impacts taking place outside of the EU borders, resulting from the EU's demand for food products, in terms of environmental and social indicators.
Technical summaryHuman demand for agri-food products contributes to environmental degradation in the form of land-use impacts and emissions into the atmosphere. Development and implementation of suitable policy instruments to mitigate these impacts requires robust and timely statistics at sectoral, regional and global levels. In this study, we aim to assess the environmental and social impacts embodied in European Union's (EU's) demand for agri-food products. To this end, we select a range of indicators: emissions (carbon dioxide, particulate matter, sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxide), land use, employment and income. We trace these environmental and social impacts across EU's trading partners to identify specific sectors and regions as hotspots of international spillovers embodied in EU's food supply chains and find that these hotspots are wide-ranging in all continents. EU's food demand is responsible for 5% of the EU's total CO2 consumption-based footprint, 9% of the total NOX footprint, 16% of the total PM footprint, 6% of the total SO2 footprint, 46% of the total land-use footprint, 13% of the total employment footprint and 5% of the total income footprint. Our results serve to inform future reforms in the EU for aligning policies and strategies with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the objectives of the Paris Climate Agreement.
Social media summarySignificant environmental and social spillover effects embodied in the EU's food supply chains.
A Personal Approach to Teaching about Climate Change
- Manfred Lenzen, Christopher Dey, Joy Murray
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- Australian Journal of Environmental Education / Volume 18 / 2002
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 June 2015, pp. 35-45
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The problem of climate change is complex, global, and long-term, and therefore difficult to grapple with for politicians, scientists, teachers, and students alike. Teachers in particular face the problem of presenting climate change in a way that is not abstract and distant. To engage the intellect as well as emotions, students need to feel personally involved. One way to achieve this personal involvement is to link climate change to students' individual lives. Such a relationship can be created using a personal greenhouse gas budget, comprising ail emissions caused by a student over one year. A personal greenhouse gas calculator was developed at the School of Physics, University of Sydney, in the form of a computer spreadsheet, and applied in university teaching. This calculator does not only address emissions from energy use, but also those emissions embodied in goods and services. Embodied emissions are often ignored when climate change is related to lifestyles, As its normative part, the calculator states a benchmark of 3.5 t CO2 per person per year, based on the principle of global equity and sustainability. First experiences show that most students agree with that benchmark, and accept responsibility for embodied emissions. However, their own emissions results exceed by far the equitable and sustainable budget. This experience triggers various feelings, ranging from surprise and motivation, to guilt, denial, self-defence, cynicism, anger, and frustration. In contrast to a model where teaching is seen as transmission of information, this personal and provocative approach creates an emotional response, which affects memory, which in turn holds out the promise of long-term change.
Teaching Responsibility for Climate Change: Three Neglected Issues
- Manfred Lenzen, Syd Smith
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- Australian Journal of Environmental Education / Volume 15 / 1999
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 June 2015, pp. 65-75
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Based on a review of NSW and Victorian education materials, we conclude that the following three issues are neglected within education about climate change, and should be included in future syllabuses: (1) there are large disparities in per-capita greenhouse gas emissions between industrialised and developing countries. Hence, international equity and its implications for Australians must be addressed. (2) There is a considerable gap between the outcome of Australian emissions abatement, and reductions, which are necessary to achieve an ecologically sustainable and internationally equitable emissions level. Given the absence of adequate technological and political incentives, the potential of individual responses must be further explored. (3) Responsibility for climate change is not restricted to emissions from households and private cars, but must be extended towards emissions associated with the personal consumption of goods and services.
Chapter 18 - Urban Energy Systems
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- By Arnulf Grubler, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria and Yale University, Xuemei Bai, Australian National University, Thomas Buettner, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Shobhakar Dhakal, Global Carbon Project and National Institute for Environmental Studies, David J. Fisk, Imperial College London, Toshiaki Ichinose, National Institute for Environmental Studies, James E. Keirstead, Imperial College London, Gerd Sammer, University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences, David Satterthwaite, International Institute for Environment and Development, Niels B. Schulz, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria and Imperial College, Nilay Shah, Imperial College London, Julia Steinberger, The Institute of Social Ecology, Austria and University of Leeds, Helga Weisz, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Gilbert Ahamer, University of Graz, Timothy Baynes, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Daniel Curtis, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Michael Doherty, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Nick Eyre, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Junichi Fujino, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Keisuke Hanaki, University of Tokyo, Mikiko Kainuma, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Shinji Kaneko, Hiroshima University, Manfred Lenzen, University of Sydney, Jacqui Meyers, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Hitomi Nakanishi, University of Canberra, Victoria Novikova, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Krishnan S. Rajan, International Institute of Information Technology, Seongwon Seo, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Ram M. Shrestha, Asian Institute of Technology, Priyadarshi R. Shukla, Indian Institute of Management, Alice Sverdlik, International Institute for Environment and Development, Jayant Sathaye, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Global Energy Assessment Writing Team
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- Global Energy Assessment
- Published online:
- 05 September 2012
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- 27 August 2012, pp 1307-1400
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Summary
Executive Summary
More than 50% of the global population already lives in urban settlements and urban areas are projected to absorb almost all the global population growth to 2050, amounting to some additional three billion people. Over the next decades the increase in rural population in many developing countries will be overshadowed by population flows to cities. Rural populations globally are expected to peak at a level of 3.5 billion people by around 2020 and decline thereafter, albeit with heterogeneous regional trends. This adds urgency in addressing rural energy access, but our common future will be predominantly urban. Most of urban growth will continue to occur in small-to medium-sized urban centers. Growth in these smaller cities poses serious policy challenges, especially in the developing world. In small cities, data and information to guide policy are largely absent, local resources to tackle development challenges are limited, and governance and institutional capacities are weak, requiring serious efforts in capacity building, novel applications of remote sensing, information, and decision support techniques, and new institutional partnerships. While ‘megacities’ with more than 10 million inhabitants have distinctive challenges, their contribution to global urban growth will remain comparatively small.
Energy-wise, the world is already predominantly urban. This assessment estimates that between 60–80% of final energy use globally is urban, with a central estimate of 75%. Applying national energy (or GHG inventory) reporting formats to the urban scale and to urban administrative boundaries is often referred to as a ‘production’ accounting approach and underlies the above GEA estimate.
Annex II - Methodology
- Edited by Ottmar Edenhofer, Ramón Pichs-Madruga, Youba Sokona, Kristin Seyboth, Susanne Kadner, Timm Zwickel, Patrick Eickemeier, Gerrit Hansen, Steffen Schlömer, Christoph von Stechow, Patrick Matschoss
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- Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation
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- 05 December 2011
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- 21 November 2011, pp 973-1000
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Summary
Introduction
Parties need to agree upon common data, standards, supporting theories and methodologies. This annex summarizes a set of agreed upon conventions and methodologies. These include the establishment of metrics, determination of a base year, definitions of methodologies and consistency of protocols that permit a legitimate comparison between alternative types of energy in the context of climate change phenomena. This section defines or describes these fundamental definitions and concepts as used throughout this report, recognizing that the literature often uses inconsistent definitions and assumptions.
This report communicates uncertainty where relevant, for example, by showing the results of sensitivity analyses and by quantitatively presenting ranges in cost numbers as well as ranges in the scenario results. This report does not apply formal IPCC uncertainty terminology because at the time of approval of this report, IPCC uncertainty guidance was in the process of being revised.
Metrics for analysis in this report
A number of metrics can simply be stated or are relatively easy to define. Annex II provides the set of agreed upon metrics. Those which require further description are found below. The units used and basic parameters pertinent to the analysis of each RE type in this report include:
International System of Units (SI) for standards and units
Metric tonnes (t) CO2, CO2eq
Primary energy values in exajoules (EJ)
IEA energy conversion factors between physical and energy units
Capacity: GW thermal (GWt), GW electricity (GWe)
Capacity factor
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Chapter 9 - Renewable Energy in the Context of Sustainable Development
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- By Jayant Sathaye, Oswaldo Lucon, Atiq Rahman, John Christensen, Fatima Denton, Junichi Fujino, Garvin Heath, Monirul Mirza, Hugh Rudnick, August Schlaepfer, Andrey Shmakin, Gerhard Angerer, Christian Bauer, Morgan Bazilian, Robert Brecha, Peter Burgherr, Leon Clarke, Felix Creutzig, James Edmonds, Christian Hagelüken, Gerrit Hansen, Nathan Hultman, Michael Jakob, Susanne Kadner, Manfred Lenzen, Jordan Macknick, Eric Masanet, Yu Nagai, Anne Olhoff, Karen Olsen, Michael Pahle, Ari Rabl, Richard Richels, Joyashree Roy, Tormod Schei, Christoph von Stechow, Jan Steckel, Ethan Warner, Tom Wilbanks, Yimin Zhang, Volodymyr Demkine, Ismail Elgizouli, Jeffrey Logan, Susanne Kadner
- Edited by Ottmar Edenhofer, Ramón Pichs-Madruga, Youba Sokona, Kristin Seyboth, Susanne Kadner, Timm Zwickel, Patrick Eickemeier, Gerrit Hansen, Steffen Schlömer, Christoph von Stechow, Patrick Matschoss
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- Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation
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- 05 December 2011
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- 21 November 2011, pp 707-790
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Summary
Executive Summary
Historically, economic development has been strongly correlated with increasing energy use and growth of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Renewable energy (RE) can help decouple that correlation, contributing to sustainable development (SD). In addition, RE offers the opportunity to improve access to modern energy services for the poorest members of society, which is crucial for the achievement of any single of the eight Millennium Development Goals.
Theoretical concepts of SD can provide useful frameworks to assess the interactions between SD and RE. SD addresses concerns about relationships between human society and nature. Traditionally, SD has been framed in the three-pillar model—Economy, Ecology, and Society—allowing a schematic categorization of development goals, with the three pillars being interdependent and mutually reinforcing. Within another conceptual framework, SD can be oriented along a continuum between the two paradigms of weak sustainability and strong sustainability. The two paradigms differ in assumptions about the substitutability of natural and human-made capital. RE can contribute to the development goals of the three-pillar model and can be assessed in terms of both weak and strong SD, since RE utilization is defined as sustaining natural capital as long as its resource use does not reduce the potential for future harvest.