Livestock's "short shadow"? Balancing mitigation of climate change against other values.

Livestock has been said to cast a long shadow on climate change. However, environmental protection has also other aspects. This paper analyses one possible conflict between environmental goals in Sweden: to decrease the number of ruminants in order to minimise the impact on climate change and to maintain the number of ruminants in order to preserve biological diversity. Some Swedish stakeholders seem to argue that preserving biological diversity carries as much weight as mitigating climate change. This can be interpreted as if ruminants are considered to be good for the environment despite their impact on climate change, and thus shortening the long shadow. We point out, however, that only a fraction of ruminants are grazing pastures with high biodiversity. For most Swedish meat production, this argument is of minor importance for environmental sustainability.