Plant Based Treaty

Position Papers

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Sign the Plant Based Treaty

21 Cities call for a global Plant Based Treaty

The IPCC demonstrates that a vegan diet is the optimal diet to drastically reduce food related emissions. The Plant Based Treaty offers a roadmap for a fast and just transition to a plant-based food system this decade in response to the climate emergency.

Release Date: May 31, 2023

The current global food system with expanding meat, dairy, and egg consumption is alarmingly transgressing planetary boundaries, risking food security, and harming human health and animal welfare. 21 Cities including the Scottish Capital Edinburgh and Los Angeles have called for world leaders to negotiate a Plant Based Treaty as a companion to the Paris Agreement.

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Regenerative farming causes agricultural sprawl

Kick regenerative animal agriculture into the long grass and implement plant-based food solutions to the climate, ocean and biodiversity crisis

Release Date: November 4, 2022

The animal agriculture industry is perpetuating a myth that grazing cattle can offset greenhouse gas emissions by stimulating soil to absorb more carbon from the atmosphere, a process known as soil carbon sequestration.

Just as we need to keep fossil fuels in the ground, meat, dairy and eggs need to stay off our plates. That includes “regenerative” animal agriculture. Surprised?

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Deforestation or reforestation?

The answer depends on embracing plant-based diet change

Release Date: November 4, 2022

We remain blithely unaware that eating meat, dairy, and eggs is directly contributing to agricultural sprawl in ghost acres, forgetting the farmed animal feed is likely to be grown at great ecological cost, thousands of miles away.

Agricultural sprawl is defined as using large amounts of land, pesticides and fertilizer in animal farming to produce small amounts of animal-based foods.

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Critical for survival but it’s treated like dirt

How a Soil Treaty can save the world

Release Date: November 4, 2022

Soil is part of a key life support system, regulating water cycles and mitigating climate change by storing carbon dioxide (CO2) as carbon. Amazingly, the world’s soils currently hold around two to three times as much carbon as the atmosphere, making it the second largest carbon sink after the ocean. However, this climate crisis-crunching function of carbon sequestration comes at a cost – soils must be healthy in order to sequester and keep carbon, otherwise, they release it back into the atmosphere, adding to already escalating greenhouse gas emissions.

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Burping our way to extinction

Sharp cuts to methane offer our last hope to avoid a climate catastrophe and can be delivered this decade with a shift to a plant-based food system

Release Date: November 4, 2022

Methane emissions have undergone a rapid rise, with measurements from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recording it passing 1,900 parts per billion (ppb) in 2021, almost triple pre-industrial levels. Methane levels increased by a record-breaking 17 ppb in 2021, up from the 15.3 ppb record rise in 2020. This planet-heating greenhouse gas is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year time span.

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Growing plant-based foods in fertile soil is as important as leaving fossil fuels in the ground

The Plant Based Treaty, modelled on the Fossil Fuel Treaty, provides a roadmap to ending animal farming

Release Date: November 4, 2022

Agricultural sprawl is defined as using large amounts of land to produce small amounts of food. Animal farming now occupies 78 percent of agricultural land globally yet produces only 18 percent of calories.

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Appetite for a Plant Based Treaty?

The IPCC repeatedly demonstrates that a vegan diet is the optimal diet to drastically reduce food related emissions

Release Date: June 6, 2022

Immediate, rapid, and sustained cuts to greenhouse gas emissions from both fossil fuels and animal agriculture is imperative to avoiding catastrophic climate breakdown.

The Plant Based Treaty offers a roadmap for a fast and just transition to a plant-based food system this decade in response to the climate emergency.

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