Serious errors and biases in the sustainability report
This is a chronicle. Opinions in the text are the responsibility of the writer
Last fall, the Nordic Council of Ministers, which is a cooperation council for the Nordic governments, released a report on sustainable consumption in the Nordic region (‘Towards sustainable consumption in the Nordic region’).
The report describes the environmental and social effects of household consumption in the Nordic countries, with a focus on housing, transport, food and consumer goods. It also contains proposals for measures that can lead to more sustainable consumption in the Nordic countries.
Among a total of 8 measures, the first is to replace beef with other types of meat. Point two is to replace meat with vegetables.
Upon closer examination of the substrate for these recommendations, it is a number of high we questioned. Figure 4 on page 22 presents the level of emissions of CO2 equivalents at national level for the various Nordic countries, divided by the consumption of various food products.
The red bar shows emissions linked to the consumption of nationally produced beef, and experts come out with high absolute emissions compared to the other food categories.
The figure shows that the emission figures for cattle measured in GWP100 are approx. 900,000 units to Denmark, 3 million units for Finland, 3.75 million units for Norway, and approx. 1.2 million units for Sweden. It is not stated what these tools are, but with the help of the table in the report’s appendix, it may indicate that the unit is tonnes of CO2 equivalents. For comparison, Nibio has calculated that the entire Norwegian agriculture together accounts for approximately 4.5 million. tonnes of CO2 equivalents.
The figure thus shows that the emissions of greenhouse gases linked to the consumption of beef is approximately 3 times higher in Norway than in Sweden, despite the fact that table 9 in the report’s appendix shows that Sweden both consumes more beef per capita and produces more beef nationally than Norway. In the report, the authors write that “the explanation for this is unclear”, without problematizing or mentioning more than that.
Figure 5 shows a similar overview of greenhouse gas emissions from the consumption of different foodstuffs, but in this case linked to what is imported.
Here it is also a basis for asking questions with results. Although countries such as Denmark and Sweden import approx. 10 times as much beef as Norway, the figure that all the countries have, so to speak, exactly the same emissions linked to the national visa of imported beef, of approx. 5.95 million units, which are probably tonnes of CO2 equivalents.
Using tables in reports, we can divide the total emissions by the number of kilos of meat produced and imported, and get the following highs:
The results then show, among other things, that Norway, Finland and Denmark indicate up to four times higher CO2e intensity than Sweden for the large amount of meat each country has produced itself.
For the imported meat, there are very large variations – up to a 10-fold difference – even if the countries and production systems from which it is imported should be relatively similar to the Nordic countries.
For anyone who knows and understands the factors that control the intensity of emissions in beef production, it is obvious that these results are illogical and crazy. In comparison, both the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) database and studies from Nibio show completely different heights, with variations between approx. 10–20 kilos of CO2e per kilos of beef, both in Norway and Europe and somewhat higher from suckler cow production.
In general, the stables are higher in South America (where part of the beef is imported from the Nordic country), but it is usually not higher than 40–50 kilos per kilo of beef.
We asked questions about Figures 4 and 5 to the Nordic Council of Ministers and asked for an explanation of how they arrived at them. The Nordic Council of Ministers forwarded comments to the authors of the report, and the response we received to this was, among other things, the following:
“The calculations that form the basis of the environmental impact (among other things kg CO2e) come from Exiobase, which in turn is based on a collection of data (read more here or here).”
And on the very specific question of how Sweden and Denmark, which have higher domestic production and consumption of beef with lower emissions in Norway, said the following:
“It is true in Sweden and Denmark produces more (data from FAOSTAT). Data for GWP100 comes from Exiobase, which is based on input-output analysis of environmental expenditure (i.e. the monetary value and not the consumption in kg), therefore it differs.»
Based on this answered attempt We wanted to find out how models from Exiobase are built in concrete terms, but it turned out to be difficult. Whether Exiobase itself contains methodological errors, or is simply not adapted to understanding agroecological systems – or whether the authors behind the report have used Exiobase in the wrong way, is unknown.
But what we can say quickly is that the results produced in the report from the Nordic Council of Ministers are very skewed, the environmental impact of beef is presented as much higher than it actually is.
We believe that it is a problem when reports pretending to be scientific “hides” when they are obvious in the basis. It is even more serious when these results provide the basis for concrete political recommendations under the auspices of recognized institutions such as the Nordic Council of Ministers.
We would like to point out that we mainly only examined the emissions linked to beef. It cannot be ruled out that similar errors are found in other parts of the report.