Geneva: The target of keeping global warming below 2 degrees will not be possible without changes in land use, paired with new food consumption habits such as switching to a plant-based diet, a United Nations report said on Thursday.

The special report on climate and land by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) described plant-based diets as a major opportunity for mitigating and adapting to climate change, and included a policy recommendation to reduce meat consumption. The report said that the West's high consumption of meat and dairy produce was fuelling global warming. But scientists and officials stopped short of explicitly calling on everyone to become vegan or vegetarian. They said that more people could be fed using less land if individuals cut down on eating meat.