Title
Climate change mitigation opportunities based on carbon footprint estimates of dietary patterns in Peru
Date Issued
2017
Access level
restricted access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Publisher(s)
Public Library of Science
Abstract
Food consumption accounts for an important proportion of the world GHG emissions per capita. Previous studies have delved into the nature of dietary patterns, showing that GHG reductions can be achieved in diets if certain foods are consumed rather than other, more GHG intensive products. For instance, vegetarian and low-meat diets have proved to be less carbon intensive than diets that are based on ruminant meat. These environmental patterns, increasingly analyzed in developed nations, are yet to be assessed in countries liked Peru where food purchase represents a relatively high percentage of the average household expenditure, ranging from 38% to 51% of the same. Therefore, food consumption can be identified as a potential way to reduce GHG emissions in Peru. However, the Peruvian government lacks a specific strategy to mitigate emissions in this sector, despite the recent ratification of the Paris Accord. In view of this, the main objective of this study is to analyze the environmental impacts of a set of 47 Peruvian food diet profiles, including geographical and socioeconomic scenarios. In order to do this, Life Cycle Assessment was used as the methodological framework to obtain the overall impacts of the components in the dietary patterns observed and primary data linked to the composition of diets were collected from the Peruvian National Institute for Statistics (INEI). Life cycle inventories for the different products that are part of the Peruvian diet were obtained from a set of previous scientific articles and reports regarding food production. Results were computed using the IPCC 2013 assessment method to estimate GHG emissions. Despite variations in GHG emissions from a geographical perspective, no significant differences were observed between cities located in the three Peruvian natural regions (i.e., coast, Andes and Amazon basin). In contrast, there appears to be a strong, positive correlation between GHG emissions and social expenditure or academic status. When compared to GHG emissions computed in the literature for developed nations, where the average caloric intake is substantially higher, diet-related emissions in Peru were in the low range. Our results could be used as a baseline for policy support to align nutritional and health policies in Peru with the need to reduce the environmental impacts linked to food production. © 2017 Vázquez-Rowe et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Volume
12
Issue
11
Number
28
Language
English
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85034240455
PubMed ID
Source
PLoS ONE
ISSN of the container
1932-6203
Source funding
Sponsor(s)
The authors wish to thank the Dir ección Gener al deI n vestigación from the P on tificia U niversi-dad Ca tólica del P erú (PUCP) for the financial support of the WALAYA project. BSc Gustavo Larrea-Gallegos wishes to thank the Peruvian ConsejoN acional de Ciencia, T ecnología e I nno-vación T ecnológica (CONCYTEC) for financial support. Dr. Pedro Villanueva-Rey wishes to thanktheGalicianGovernmentforfinancialsupport(I2Cpostdoctoralstudentgrantspro-gramme).Dr.RosaCrujeiras,IsabelQuispe,JairSantilla ´ n,JonatanRojas,DiegoEchegaray, Dr.KarinBartlandSonniaCa ´ ceresarethankedforvaluablescientificexchange.
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica