Nazava , powered by Resilience sells affordable waterfilters in order to increase access to safe water.
Tax on inefficient food (meat tax) helps against hunger
The Dutch social liberal party recently proposed a tax on meat (meat tax). Meat production has severe impacts on the climate
Besides climate effects, meat consumption places a huge pressure on the world food system. It takes 5- 10 kg of food for one kg of beef of lamb.
Much of the fodder fed to animals can be used for human consumption. In addition, the land that is curently used for fodder production can
be used to grow cereals or potatoes.
However, not all meat is the same. Chicken are a lot more efficient then cows, they need only 2 kg of feed for one kg of meat and insects perform even better (see our report table 3). Besides that, not all vegetables are as innocent as you might think.
Cashew nuts, popular among vegetarians, produce so little per hectare that they could be considered as inefficient as beef. Additionally, reducing yield by using alternative farming methods like organic farming also reduces the amount of food available and places hence a higher pressure on the land.
Instead of taxing meat, a tax on inefficient food would be fairer. However, determining the efficiency for each product is a lot of work. Taxing beef would be a good start.
See also Koning et al 2008
Why resilience?
In
a world, in which sudden catastrophes, sudden shifts and disasters are
a matter of course rather than exception, scientists and policy makers
have the challenging duty to increase resilience in global socio-ecological
systems.
Resilience
strongly believes that a big share of current policy and research directed
at reducing risks of disasters like plagues, natural resource degradation,
global change and water scarcity actually decreases the resilience of
human-natural systems instead of raising it. More and more, solutions
are sought on an end-of-pipe, symptom-led basis, whilst jeopardizing
the long-term sustainability of planet earth.
Therefore, we do
not point our research at minimizing risks: We are looking for ways
to raise long-term resilience of the world’s human-natural systems.