Improvement of economic traits and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in sheep and goats in Central Asia

Flavio Forabosco () and Riccardo Negrini
Additional contact information
Flavio Forabosco: State Agrarian University of Moldova
Riccardo Negrini: Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, 2019, vol. 24, issue 1, No 7, 129-146

Abstract: Abstract In central Asian countries, sheep (Ovis aries) and goats (Capra hircus) represent a key economic resource for millions of people living in rural communities and, at the same time, a critical source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This study aims to estimate GHG emissions of several economic traits of sheep and goats and investigate sustainable mitigation strategies. It advances beyond previous studies by calculating the GHG emissions of traits of economic importance rather than reporting average animal emission and can thus provide insights for creating better-targeted mitigation strategies. In dairy sheep in Tajikistan, the emission intensity (EI) decreased from 62.4 to 56.7 kg CO2-eq kg−1 of protein as the production of milk increased by 20%. In meat goats raised in Turkmenistan, the EI decreased by 2.6 kg CO2-eq kg−1 of protein when simulating an increase in meat production of + 20%. Improving female fertility by 10% scaled down the EI of meat sheep in Uzbekistan by 36 kg CO2-eq kg−1 of protein. The improvement of meat and milk productions, female fertility, and litter size and the reduction of mortality, and female culling can reduce the emission intensity of sheep and goats globally. Thus, genetic improvement of economic traits is an important global mitigation tool. Furthermore, improvement of national and international sheep and goat strategies can provide policymakers with valuable information to develop regional and global mitigation actions.

Keywords: Breeding; Environment; Goat; Greenhouse gas; Mitigation; Sheep (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11027-018-9801-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:masfgc:v:24:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s11027-018-9801-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11027

DOI: 10.1007/s11027-018-9801-4

Access Statistics for this article

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change is currently edited by Robert Dixon

More articles in Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().