Science-based targets could hold the key to feeding the world
global market together is already proving tricky. Hence, to keep a lid on inflation at home amid a drop in yields, the government placed export curbs on crops like rice, wheat, sugarcane and onions. India, thus, needs to drastically boost its farmland yields.
At the same time, it also needs to keep pace with surging demand for milk, dairy and meat, which it is struggling to do despite having the largest livestock population in the world. Livestock is the biggest contributor to agricultural emissions. So, producing more milk and meat from livestock together with more food from the fields will require increasingly greater use of greenhouse-gas emitting solutions.
This would lead to more emissions and thereby put the country’s agriculture sector in a catch-22 situation. Science-based targets could be the key to resolving it. Science-based targets, defined by the Science Based Targets institute (SBTi), lay down a pathway for companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
They set out a glide slope of gradual emissions reductions that companies can follow on their way to meeting their emissions-reduction targets. These targets are set in consultation with SBTi which, following a vetting process based on the latest climate science, certifies them as being consistent with the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement – to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. In 2022, the SBTi unveiled its Forest, Land and Agriculture Guidance (FLAG), dedicated to helping companies in sectors like agriculture set reduction targets specifically for their land-based emissions.
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