Potential Biodiversity Footprint Reductions from Intended Shifts to Plant-Based Meals

Abstract Adopting plant-based diets can mitigate biodiversity loss by reducing the demand for land required for feed and livestock. Yet, most assessments rely on hypothetical dietary scenarios that potentially overestimate biodiversity gains. We conducted a large-scale consumer survey across three countries (NLD, GBR, and USA) and estimated the biodiversity footprints of current and intended future diets using the loss of mean species abundance (MSA-loss) and the loss of global species richness (RSR-loss) as indicators. Over half of the respondents expressed no intention to reduce meat or dairy consumption. Among those intending to replace meat with plant-based alternatives, biodiversity footprints based on MSA-loss associated with the consumption of meat and plant-based alternatives in main meals would decrease by up to 34% on average. When considering all respondents, the average reduction in MSA-loss from meat and meat alternatives in the three countries would be 13%. We found similar results for current and intended future consumption of dairy and their plant-based alternatives. RSR-loss showed the same patterns as MSA-loss, although dairy alternatives would contribute a large share of the total biodiversity footprint based on RSR-loss in the USA. Our findings show that intended dietary shifts may not match hypothetical dietary scenarios and that achieving sustainable dietary shifts to reduce biodiversity loss remains a considerable challenge.