Adoption of plant-based diets across Europe can improve food resilience against the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Author(s):
Sun, Z. (0000-0001-8711-8260); Scherer, L.; Zhang, Q.; Behrens, P.A. (0000-0002-2935-4799)
Published
2022
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor

Abstract

The Russia-Ukraine war has disrupted global food supply chains and driven food prices up in many parts of the world. This study applies a spatially explicit modelling approach to estimate the resilience and environmental co-benefits of a transition towards the EAT-Lancet's planetary health diets across Europe.Crises related to extreme weather events, COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine conflict have revealed serious problems in global food (inter)dependency. Here we demonstrate that a transition towards the EAT-Lancet's planetary health diet in the European Union and the United Kingdom alone would almost compensate for all production deficits from Russia and Ukraine while yielding improvements in blue water use (4.1 Gm(3) yr(-1)), greenhouse gas emissions (0.22 GtCO(2)e yr(-1)) and carbon sequestration (17.4 GtCO(2)e).

Date issued
2022-11-14
Language
English
Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
Is part of
Nature Food (2022), Vol. 3, no. 11, p. 905-910
hdl
1887/3512150
doi
10.1038/s43016-022-00634-4