Analysing the reluctance of NGOs: meat consumption and climate change

An interesting paper attempting to understand how and to what extent environmental, food-focused, and animal protection NGOs have tried to decrease, or change, domestic meat consumption considering its impact on climate change, has really influenced my search for green.

The preliminary qualitative study analysed 34 NGOs, interviewing the charities and supplementing their findings with analyses of NGO websites and outreach materials. Environmental NGOs were only chosen if they had content addressing climate change mitigation.

Here are the paper's main findings (regarding the environmental NGOs):

• Website content:
• Six out of the 18 environmental NGOs lacked content on their website that encouraged consumers to change their meat consumption to reduce GHG emissions. 
• The remaining 12 mentioned the issue within a list of actions people can take to reduce their GHG.
• Public education through campaigning: 
• Environmental NGOs had the fewest formal strategies that aimed to educate the public on meat consumption. 
• Some thought the issue fell outside their priorities, with it being more relevant to animal NGOs.
• Domestic policy efforts:
• Few environmental NGOs were encouraging national-level policies that encased meat consumption and climate change. 
• Some US NGOs were involved in the US Farm Bill.

Overall, the study found that action was limited, especially amongst environmental NGOs. Animal and food-focused NGOs dominated outreach.

The authors acknowledged that the study has its limitations, namely its lack of representative sample size and their exclusion of blog and social media content. This may have underestimated NGO efforts. I found the paper an interesting read that conjured up some questions of my own. The study replicated my discoveries when I research NGO green tips: some NGOs failed to provide any tips, and for those who did provide tips on reducing meat consumption, the advice was relatively vague (for instance failing to state the nuance between reducing your consumption of certain meats) and I found no policy efforts that addressed meat consumption (e.g. Earth Day)

There seems to be a reluctance to fully advocate for a reduction in meat consumption amongst environmental NGOs. This is disheartening. Reducing meat consumption is an easy change individuals can undertake - arguably easier than other consumer habit changes (such as buying an electric vehicle or placing solar panels on your roof). 

Why did environmental NGOs exhibit this unwillingness? I was flummoxed - just like Barack here.

I discussed this with Dr. Sam Randalls, a lecturer here at UCL, and he shed some light on the topic. There's a reluctance by environmental NGOs to promote a reduction in meat consumption because it generally doesn't align with the NGO values/fundamental mission. For instance, WWF advocates conservation; their tactics seek to address this primarily. Their donors donate for this cause and therefore, WWF don't want to displease their donors since WWF are partly reliant on donations. 

Additionally, conservation is a relatively easy issue to address and quantify compared to measuring how a reduction in meat consumption will impact climate change. It's relatively simple to state how many X animals are being saved through various strategies, whereas it is harder to quantify how many GHG emissions are being reduced from eating X amount less meat. Time and effort is therefore spent on efforts that advocate conservation.

Environmental NGO reluctance is also generated through the controversy of attempting to change people's dietary habits; your diet is highly personal, encased in cultural norms. Not only is it hard to change people's priorities, but people don't want you to. The NGO may not want to risk advocating individual lifestyle change (even though they may think it is an important issue) in case it angers people and possibly affects funding. Similarly, there are many reasons and barriers to why people don't want to eat meat and so unsurprisingly, environmental NGOs may frankly think it's not worth it: climate change can be fought another way or by someone else.

This post marks the end of my discussion on meat consumption in the context of climate change mitigation. I hope you have enjoyed reading about it as much as I have enjoyed researching about it! Importantly, it has opened up questions and flaws regarding individual behaviour change as a way to become more green. For it to matter, individual action has to be cumulative but many may be hesitant to change.