Connecting Climate Change Mitigation to Global Land Regeneration, Doubling Worldwide Livestock, and Reduction of Early Deaths from Noncommunicable Diseases

Aim and background This article aims to link early deaths due to diet-related noncommunicable diseases at the global level, low animal food intake, primarily in developing countries, regenerative/organic agriculture, worldwide food security, and global warming mitigation. On statistically modeling Global Burden of Disease (GBD) risk factor and health outcome data, the unexpected finding was that early deaths (death before age 70) per year per 100k population due to noncommunicable diseases (NCDs, such as coronary artery disease, emphysema, liver failure, kidney failure, and cancers) were much higher in cohorts with low consumption of animal-sourced foods (processed meat, red meat, dairy, fish, poultry, eggs, and saturated fats). Relatively low NCD rates are associated with high animal food consumption. This unexpected finding led to exploring the implications of climate change. Methods I critiqued the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) definitions of “sustainability in land management, sustainable intensification (of agriculture), climate-smart agriculture,” and “sustainability-focused socioeconomic pathway 1 (SSP1)”-the most climate-favorable scenario that the IPCC modeled. I modeled doubling the global livestock together with global regenerative/organic agriculture compared with the IPCC’s SSP1, using the IPCC’s mean 2010-2019 global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) as the baseline for comparison. Results This study found that all the IPCC’s agricultural land-related definitions of interest were aspirational without detailing the farming methods used and those not allowed. The IPCC’s land management-related definitions differed from the same or similar terms in the literature. The status quo net global agriculture and other land use GHGs (2010-2019) totaled 11.9 ± 4.4 gigatonnes (GT) carbon dioxide equivalent per year (11.9 ± 4.4 GTCO(2)-eq yr(-1)). The IPCC’s modeling of the SSP1 scenario reduced GHGs to 3 GTCO(2)-eq yr(-1) by 2050. Transitioning to global regenerative/organic agriculture (5 billion hectares) and doubling the global livestock for human consumption and agricultural land fertilization corresponded to net global GHGs = -24.1 GTCO(2)-eq yr(-1) for 2-3 decades, totaling -482 to -723 GTCO(2)-eq of CO(2) sequestration. Conclusions Doubling global livestock combined with worldwide regenerative/organic agriculture has the potential to mitigate climate change significantly more than SSP1 while providing global food security by reversing land degradation. Worldwide transitioning from intensive industrial agriculture that degrades land to regenerative/organic agriculture that sequesters CO(2) in soil ​​​​​and doubling global livestock would require initial support with finances, resources, and additional workers for farms in both developing and developed countries. Subsequently, farms and farmers would be sustainably self-supporting with food sales. Retaining the existing farm workers and attracting hundreds of millions more workers would likely require transitioning most agricultural lands into worker-owned cooperatives.