Plant Based Treaty calls for global agreement and all hands on deck to address the ‘code red’ climate emergency
GUEST ARTICLE: A new initiative calling on the world’s governments to come together and take urgent action to address the climate crisis by shifting to a plant-based system has been launched. Anita Krajnc and Nicola Harris explain the principle behind the Plant Based Treaty campaign, which has received widespread support from high-profile campaigners.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6th assessment report, released on August 9, 2021, issued the starkest warning yet. The Earth's average surface temperature is projected to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels around 2030, a decade earlier than the IPCC predicted just three years ago. If business as usual continues we are looking at either a catastrophic 3 degrees Celsius temperature rise or in excess of 4 degrees celsius, catapulting us into apocalypse territory. The UN Secretary-General António Guterres has described the release of this report as a ‘code red for humanity.’
The choice is ours, not that of other species or future generations. To quote Winston Churchill: “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.” Either we set up broad-based “popular front” coalitions and adopt massively bold climate actions like a Plant Based Treaty alongside a Fossil Fuel Treaty or it’s too late and we cross a strew of climate tipping points.
The IPCC suggests we have, at best, five years to slow the worst effects of climate chaos. Dr Peter Carter, IPCC expert reviewer and Plant Based Treaty endorser says we must address two key causes of rising greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide - fossil fuel energy production and animal agriculture: “Everyone has to do everything and we have to do it now.” We urgently need global agreements on all greenhouse gases and the Plant Based Treaty would deliver just that.
What is the Plant Based Treaty?
Modelled on the Fossil Fuel Treaty, the Plant Based Treaty aims to put food systems at the forefront of combatting the climate crisis, create bottom-up pressure on governments to negotiate a global agreement, and promote diet change and food system change through a series of guides on the website, email lists, workshops, and global city actions.
As a companion to the Paris Climate Agreement, the Treaty urges governments to negotiate a global protocol which will include the following 3R principles: (1) Relinquish: halt the expansion of animal agriculture and subsequent deforestation of Earth; (2) Redirect: promote a strong sustained shift to plant-based food systems away from animal agriculture; and (3) Restore: heal key ecosystems and reforest the Earth.
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What can you do to support this initiative?
We are inviting 10 million individuals, 10,000 organizations, 10,000 businesses and 50 cities by 2023 to endorse the call-to-action and put pressure on national governments to negotiate an international Plant Based Treaty. We hope to work with different groups from animal, environmental, climate justice, human rights, and labour groups, business, cities and states. We depend upon bottom-up ‘people power’ to bring this treaty to the international negotiating table.
Everyone has an important role in this do-it-together movement and we can all help avert a catastrophic planetary collapse. This is humanity’s last hope for doing the right thing and changing our relationship with nature and our treatment of other sentient beings. Tolstoy was right in insisting more than a century ago in a short, Buddhist moral tale he wrote called ‘Esarhaddon, King of Assyria’: “...all life is one, and that when men wish to harm others, they really do evil to themselves.”
With a variety of tools in the toolkit from community gardens to helping neighbours to switch to plant-based diets, veganising menus in schools and at work, public information campaigns and redirecting subsidies to plant-based foods, we can take a plethora of exciting actions individually and as a community.
Diet change, not climate change
A vegan diet, with no animal source food, is a clear winner in lowering our carbon footprint the most. Various studies, including the diet chart from the IPCC 2019 report called “Climate Change and Land” shows a vegan diet has the least impact on the planet. Even the most environmentally impactful vegan diet is better for the planet than the least destructive animal-based diet. It’s not a time for half measures. Switching to plant-based diets on a massive scale is an essential daily climate action to help combat climate catastrophe.
Launching the Plant Based Treaty in 50 Cities
We need a Herculean effort to turn this ship around. A good place to start is targeting cities in a bottom-up approach much like the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty which has 12 cities and sub-national governments endorsing so far. Can we do the same?
We need your help for our soft launch when the website goes live to endorse the treaty, spread the word on social media and join city actions. We are planning actions in at least 50 cities on Tuesday, August 31 where we will ask cities to play their part and endorse the treaty. Please email hello@plantbasedtreaty.org if you'd like to organize an action at your city hall.
Eat plants, plant trees, endorse the Plant Based Treaty and pledge to help us reach our 2023 goals.
Visit plantbasedtreaty.org.
Anita Krajnc is global campaign coordinator and Nicola Harris co-director of communications for the Plant Based Treaty
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