Edinburgh Becomes the First European Capital to Endorse the Plant Based Treaty

Edinburgh has become the first capital city in Europe to endorse the Plant Based Treaty, after councillors voted to back a global call to move food systems away from animal farming and toward plants.

The City of Edinburgh Council's Policy and Sustainability Committee approved a Green Group amendment on Tuesday, January 17, which passed with 12 votes to 5 with support from the Greens, Labour and the Scottish National Party. The council leader will now write to the First Minister asking the Scottish Government to endorse the treaty too, and officers have been asked for an action plan and timescale for changing the council's own activities.

The Plant Based Treaty is modeled on the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Edinburgh has also backed. It asks national governments to negotiate an international agreement, alongside the Paris Agreement, that tackles the emissions coming from what we eat.

Green councillor Steve Burgess first brought the idea to a full council meeting in March 2022, when councillors voted unanimously to commission an impact assessment before making a decision. That report, published last Friday, found that food and diet make up 23% of Edinburgh's consumption-based carbon footprint. Burgess told Natural News Desk:

Green councillors very much welcome the decision by Edinburgh council to endorse the Plant Based Treaty as we proposed.

Edinburgh council itself now also has a fantastic opportunity to encourage far more plant-based eating...

Not everyone is celebrating. The Scottish Countryside Alliance accused the council of being "anti-farming". But nobody is banning anything here (the haggis is safe, for now). The council is simply admitting what the science has been telling us for years.

Researchers at Oxford University found that a global switch to vegan diets could save around 8 million lives a year by 2050 and cut food-related emissions by more than two-thirds. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization puts livestock's share of global greenhouse gas emissions at 14.5%, roughly the same as the entire global transport sector.

Edinburgh follows Los Angeles, which became the largest city to endorse the Plant Based Treaty last year, while Dutch city Haarlem became the first city in the world to ban meat adverts. It's a long way from a handful of Danish politicians going vegan to tackle climate change and the German environment ministry taking meat off the menu at official functions. It's all part of the plant-based revolution Google predicted back in 2016.

One capital down. Plenty more to go.