【精英翻譯】的部落格

Can We Grow More Food on Less Land? 人類可以用更少的土地 生產更多糧食嗎？

精英翻譯社轉自: https://paper.udn.com/udnpaper/POH0067/337387/web/

文／Brad Plumer

譯／陳韋廷

If the world hopes to make meaningful progress on climate change, it won’t be enough for cars and factories to get cleaner. Our cows and wheat fields will have to become radically more efficient, too.

如果這個世界希望在氣候變遷上取得有意義的進展，只靠汽車與工廠變得更乾淨是不夠的。我們的牛隻與小麥田也必須從根本上提高效率。

That’s the basic conclusion of a sweeping new study issued by the World Resources Institute, an environmental group. The report warns that the world’s agricultural system will need drastic changes in the next few decades in order to feed billions more people without triggering a climate catastrophe.

環境組織「世界資源研究所」發表了一份包容廣泛的新研究報告，獲致以上基本結論，該報告提醒世人，未來幾十年世界農業系統需要徹底改變，方足以在不引起氣候災難的情況下養活多出了數十億的人口。

The challenge is daunting: Agriculture already occupies roughly 40 percent of the world’s vegetated land and is responsible for about a quarter of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions. But with the global population expected to grow from 7.2 billion people today to nearly 10 billion by 2050, and with many millions of people eating more meat as incomes rise, that environmental impact is on pace to expand dramatically.

這是嚴酷的挑戰：農業已占用世界約40%有植被的土地，溫室氣體排放量也約達人類總排放量的四分之一，但隨著全球人口料將自目前的72億人成長至2050年的近100億人，並伴隨數以百萬計的人因收入增加而食用更多的肉，環境承受的這種衝擊正在急劇擴大。

Based on current trends, the authors calculated, the world would need to produce 56 percent more calories in 2050 than it did in 2010. If farmers and ranchers met that demand by clearing away more forests and other ecosystems for cropland and pasture, as they have often done in the past, they would end up transforming an area twice the size of India.

報告的作者們預測，依照目前趨勢，世界2050年時須較2010年時多生產56%的卡路里。若農牧從業人員一仍舊例，透過清除更多森林與其他生態系統來滿足農田和牧場的需求，他們最終改造的面積將是印度的兩倍大。

That, in turn, could make it nearly impossible to stay below 2 degrees Celsius of global warming, the agreed-upon international goal, even if the world’s fossil-fuel emissions were rapidly phased down. When forests are converted into farmland, the large stores of carbon locked away in those trees is released into the atmosphere.

果若如此，即便全球化石燃料的溫室氣體排放量迅速遞減，國際上一致同意的目標，亦即讓全球升溫低於攝氏兩度，也幾乎不可能達成。當森林被改造成農田時，鎖在那些樹木中的大量碳會釋放到大氣中。

“Food is the mother of all sustainability challenges,” said Janet Ranganathan, vice president for science and research at the World Resources Institute. “We can’t get below 2 degrees without major changes to this system.”

世界資源研究所負責科學和研究的副所長珍妮·藍佳納森說：「糧食是所有永續問題挑戰之母。這個系統不做重大變革，我們無法壓到兩度以下。」

The new study, the result of six years’ worth of modeling work conducted in partnership with French agricultural researchers, is hardly the first to warn that feeding the world sustainably will be a formidable task. But the authors take a different view of the most plausible solutions.

這份新研究報告是跟法國農業研究人員合作，進行為期六年模擬工作的結果，稱不上是警告永續養活世人十分艱難的第一份報告，但作者們對最合理的解決方法持不同的看法。

In the past, researchers who have looked at the food problem have suggested that the key to a sustainable agriculture system is to persuade consumers to eat far less meat and waste far less of the food that’s already grown.

糧食問題的研究人員過去認為，農業系統得以永續的關鍵，在於說服消費者大幅減少肉食量，以及對已經種植出來的糧食的浪費。

The new report, however, cautions that this could prove difficult in practice. The authors do recommend that the biggest consumers of beef and lamb, such as those in Europe and the United States, could cut back their consumption by about 40 percent by 2050, or down to about 1.5 servings a week on average.

不過，這份新報告警告說，這可能很難落實。報告的作者們的確提出了他們的建議，牛肉與羊肉的最大消費者，像是歐洲和美國人，到2050年時可將消耗量減少約40％，或減至每個禮拜平均約1.5份。