Sustainable food production and consumption is fundamental to the achievement of the worldwide UN Sustainable Development Goals. For a food system to be sustainable, it needs to provide adequate nutrition and food security while ensuring that all the conditions necessary for food security and adequate nutrition of future generations are not compromised. Among all economic sectors, food has the most significant impact on the environment, especially with regards to animal products, and meat in particular. Thus, dietary choices, and the levels of meat consumption specifically, have a heavy impact on the use of global resources, making the adoption of more sustainable diets very relevant worldwide. This also makes a fitting case for wicked problems, characterized by a considerable scientific uncertainty, non-linear development and lack of consensus, and for which solutions can only be developed as “better or worse”. The objective of this work is first to contribute, with evidence from data analysis, to an increasing awareness of how meat consumption impacts environmental resources globally and why it should be considered a wicked problem that should be managed adequately. The second aim is to investigate the status of action and awareness in civil society regarding the environmental impacts of meat, and to assess the potential of academia to foster change. 

For the first part of the analysis, the main input was quantitative data from the statistical database of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Three different indicators considering the amount of land required for animal products production, the amount of (beef, poultry and pig) meat eaten per capita per year, and the number of animals slaughtered per capita per year were analyzed through a statistical converge assessment. The timeframe of the analysis was 1961-2009. Open-source data from Terra-i and PRODES added information on specific aspects related to land use. The first results underlined the fact that meat consumption is already converging globally, with slight decreases in consumption levels in a few Western countries, but major increases in some developing countries. While the number of animals slaughtered per capita has decreased in Northern America, Oceania, and Southern Europe during the last decade, the global average has more than tripled, due to significant increases in Eastern Asia, Central, and South America, especially as regards poultry meat: such developments have resulted in an overall decrease of consistency equal to 260%. Overall, the results supported the hypothesis that different regions are progressing towards the same patterns of meat consumption at different speeds. In a case example, the data concerning land use in the biodiversity hotspot of Madre de Dios in Peru showed how deforestation is driven by the demand for meat; with a considerable percentage of the forest being converted to permanent meadows and pastures, with a noteworthy correlation between the amount of forest cleared and the distance from road infrastructures. It can therefore be concluded that if alternative and more sustainable agricultural practices (including agroforestry) were to be introduced throughout the region, there would be a much greater prospect for biodiversity conservation. 

The second part of the analysis was carried out as a review of existing food policies and dietary guidelines worldwide, including a literature review and data available from the FAO database. A semi-structured questionnaire was also used to assess the potential role of academia in fostering the change towards more sustainable diets. The review showed that awareness and policy action concerning the impact of meat consumption on environmental resources is relatively scarce. It can be argued that this general lack of policies and supporting guidelines related to sustainable diets hinders a more consistent awareness in civil society concerning the relevance and urgency of this matter: as earlier research has shown, currently, the majority of people still struggle to see the connection between the reduction of individual meat consumption levels and global environmental benefits. This thesis concludes that, when looking at meat consumption as a wicked problem, it then becomes evident that a more widespread cooperation among all sectors and stakeholders would be key to bringing about a significant change, and academia could have a more relevant role in this sense. Participatory and action research approaches in academia could contribute to the adoption of sustainable diets, particularly with regard to reducing meat consumption. The thesis, furthermore, discusses how serious and urgent it is to reduce the environmental impacts generated by meat consumption, and how academia could act as an example for the rest of society.