October 29, 2026
New research commissioned by
Greenpeace International has revealed that an alternative
greenhouse gas accounting metric, aggressively backed by
agribusiness lobbyists, would allow major meat and dairy
exporting nations to conceal their livestock sector’s
impact on global warming by significantly overstating
methane reductions.
The approach of measuring
emissions in this way, known as ‘No Additional Warming’,
has already been adopted by the New Zealand Government,
which last year weakened New Zealand’s methane target by
almost 50%, in defiance of both the independent Climate
Change Commission’s advice, and warnings from respected
international climate scientists.
Sophie
Nodzenski, Campaigner at Greenpeace International,
said: “Rapid methane cuts give us our best shot at
keeping global heating overshoot to a minimum while we
decarbonise the global economy. Yet, while temperature
overshoot takes center stage at COP31, the industrial
livestock lobby is pushing a dangerous accounting trick to
shirk its fair share. Changing the metrics to hide real
emissions isn’t climate action – it’s shifting the bill
for massive pollution onto those least responsible for
it.”
Rhiannon Mackie, Greenpeace Aotearoa
climate spokesperson, said: “New Zealand is leading
a global race to the bottom on climate action. If the
world’s 10 largest meat and dairy exporters were to follow
in our footsteps, we would see 10 billion tonnes of
greenhouse gas emissions go unaccounted for in just this
decade: magically wiped off the books while remaining in the
atmosphere, and continuing to superheat our
climate.”
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“If large livestock producers use this
loophole to shirk their responsibility, we face a grim
choice: either we suffer accelerated global warming, or
taxpayers, other industries, and developing nations will
have to work twice as hard to pick up the slack.”
The
report investigates GWP-, a controversial metric that tracks
whether methane emissions are going up or down rather than
counting total emission changes. It assumes that steady
methane emissions cause no extra warming because methane
breaks down quickly – even though it traps 80 times more
heat than carbon dioxide in the short term and is
responsible for approximately 0.5°C of global
heating.
Mackie said: “A worldwide
attempt to weaken climate action is currently taking place
at the behest of the agribusiness lobby – a global behemoth
that is weaponising the same tactics as Big Oil and Big
Tobacco before it, to cover up science and avoid
accountability for the harm it is causing. That includes
Federated Farmers, Beef and Lamb, and Dairy NZ here in
Aotearoa, who have effectively been allowed to rewrite
environmental laws and climate change policies under this
Government.”
“The report we’ve released today makes
it clear: any political party that claims to care about the
Paris Agreement needs to abandon ‘No Additional
Warming’; reinstall strong, science-based methane targets
as recommended by the Climate Change Commission; and take
action to cut methane emissions from intensive dairying
immediately – that means regulating the industry, reducing
herd sizes, and putting agriculture in the Emissions Trading
Scheme.”
According to modeling in the report produced
by the think-tank Cerulogy, GWP- allows countries to present
negligible cuts in emissions as significant climate
victories. A cut of a mere 0.6% in actual methane emissions
by the world’s ten largest meat and dairy exporters
between 2020 and 2030, could be reported as a 30% reduction
under the GWP- metric.
A 30% reduction of actual
emissions would allow these countries, if adopting the GWP-
metric, to claim their emissions are actually cooling the
planet – logging 898 million tonnes of “negative emissions”
in 2030 without making any real change. Under the standard
metric, 2030 would still see 640 million tonnes of methane
released by livestock into the atmosphere, continuing to
massively drive climate heating.
This bookkeeping
trick wipes away real-world climate-heating gases, creating
a massive 1,538 million tonne gap between reported figures
under GWP- and atmospheric reality in a single year, and a
cumulative 10 billion tonne gap if applied systematically in
reporting between 2020 and 2030 – equal to nearly a fifth of
the world’s current total annual global greenhouse gas
emissions. The investigation highlights the extreme scale of
these artificial ‘paper’ reductions.
For context,
1,538 million tonnes of carbon is:
- More than
Indonesia’s total national greenhouse gas emissions in
2024. - 86% of total global aviation emissions
recorded in 2023. - About 6.4 times the annual
greenhouse gas footprint of JBS, the world’s largest meat
producer, in 2023. - Equivalent to three times the
emissions from passenger cars driving across Europe’s
streets each year (780 million vehicles).
If
some countries unilaterally decide to report their methane
emissions using GWP- within the framework of a global
climate agreement that was built with absolute reductions in
mind, this would effectively wipe significant emissions off
the global emissions balance sheet, surreptitiously eating
up our remaining carbon budget for limiting warming to
1.5°C. Over the 2020-2030 period, systemic GWP- reporting
from these 10 countries would create a cumulative gap of
obscured emissions .
The report also highlights a risk
of governments using these paper savings in agriculture to
justify slower decarbonisation in heavy-polluting fossil
fuel sectors. Australia, for example, could use GWP- to
report 76 million tonnes of negative emissions to justify
continued pollution in its dirty coal sector equivalent to
20 coal-fired power stations running for a year. Meanwhile,
the United States could hide emissions equivalent to 86
million passenger cars.
Greenpeace International warns
that GWP- is a threat to global climate goals and is urging
governments to reject GWP- for national target setting and
reporting, establish binding agricultural emissions
reduction targets aligned with 1.5°C, and support a just
transition toward ecological
farming.
