View

Activists clamor for vegetarianism

By Zhang Yuwei (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-11-30 11:11

CANCUN, Mexico-Being a vegan now has a whole new meaning for Ko Yong-seok. He believes his lifestyle helps fight climate change, which has brought Ko and several other vegan activists to the United Nations climate change negotiations, which begins on Monday.

Ko, who traveled from Seoul on his own dime to discuss how livestock affects climate change, said he began his life as a vegan 28 years ago during college. His reason then was to show respect for animals.

"I felt guilty seeing the chicken raised in our backyard being cooked and felt the egg has a life in it," said Ko, 48 and director at the Climate Change and Diet Research Institute in Busan, South Korea.

In 1993, Ko became an activist in South Korea campaigning for a meat-free diet as a fight for the environment. His motivation grew stronger when he read about the link between livestock and climate change. He started campaigns with other nongovernmental groups to "save the earth through vegetarianism", as he calls it.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) published a report Livestock's Long Shadow in 2006 that first shed light on the effects of livestock farming on climate change.

Henning Steinfeld, head of analysis at FAO's livestock sector and policy branch and lead author of the 2006 report, said that the huge environmental impact that livestock have on climate change is not well understood by the public, even by farmers.

The report estimates that 7,516 million tons of carbon dioxide every year, or 18 percent of annual worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, are attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, horses, pigs and poultry.

"I wanted people to know about this serious environmental impact. It is a lifestyle we can easily change: Go vegan or at least eat less meat," Ko said.

In South Korea, Ko and other volunteers from NGOs are campaigning for "meat free Mondays", an initiative set up by the ex-Beatles singer Paul McCartney in 2009 in the United Kingdom. From next spring, more than 300 schools in Gwangju city, the sixth largest city in South Korea, will be served with a vegan meal once a week, said Cho Keal-ye, a professor at Chonnam National University and one of the vegan activists at the climate change conference.

"The main source of methane (one of the major greenhouse gases) is farmed animals," said Cho, adding there are about three times as many farmed animals as people on this planet.

According to the UK's largest animal rights group, Animal Aid, plant-based farming is far more efficient because it uses less than one-fourth of the land needed for a meat-based diet as crops are directly fed to humans and use fewer resources.

The Nicolaas G. Pierson Foundation discovered the relationship between meat consumption and emissions of greenhouse gases in its research and revealed a shocking detail. The foundation said that if all Americans adopted a vegetarian lifestyle for seven days, they would save around 700 megatons of greenhouse gas emissions - the same as taking all the cars in the country off the road.

"We came here with hope," Cho said. "When politicians are working to solve the bigger issue, we, the individuals, should do what we can do make the small changes."

Outside the meeting rooms where negotiators from governments and organizations are discussing climate change, more than 100 exhibit booths have been set up by climate change activists from all over the world, people like Ko and Cho.