What is GLEAM?

The Global Livestock Environmental Assessment Model is a modelling framework developed within the Animal Production and Health Division of FAO. It simulates the functioning and environmental impacts of livestock production activities. The most relevant characteristics of GLEAM are:

• It is based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach.
• It simulates impacts at high spatial resolution globally
• It covers upstream, on-farm and downstream impacts
• It uses widely accepted methods and follows internationally recommended guidelines.

Besides the quantification of greenhouse gas emissions, GLEAM also simulates water use and impacts of water use from the livestock sector, and interactions on biodiversity.

Why was GLEAM developed?

GLEAM addresses to two pressing issues in livestock sustainability:

• Diagnose. GLEAM captures and provides detailed information on the environmental impacts of each stage of livestock production, allowing an identification of key areas for improvement.
• Intervention. The model can assess the outcome of different mitigation and adaptation scenarios at local, national, regional or global scale, supporting the stakeholders in the decision-making process towards a more sustainable livestock sector.

What type of information does GLEAM provide?

The outputs of current version of GLEAM include:

• Livestock numbers and distribution by cohort
• Livestock production systems
• Production and management data on manure
• Animal feed rations composition and quality
• Greenhouse gas emissions from each stage of production and emission intensities by commodity
• Water use and water scarcity including water use for feed crops

GLEAM produces the outputs in both aggregated totals and GIS format.

Who are the main receptors of GLEAM outputs?

The transition towards a more sustainable livestock sector is key to ensure future food security and the livelihood of a vast numbers of people. GLEAM supports this transition by providing detailed, evidence-based information on environmental impacts to inform key stakeholders within the sector, including producers, policymakers, private sector organizations, academia, standard setting bodies and non-governmental organizations.

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What is the significance of GLEAM outputs for the transformation of the sector?

The results of GLEAM 3.0 highlight the importance of livestock production in the context of climate change and its mitigation. Livestock sector activities contribute significantly to the global emissions of human-induced greenhouse gases. At the same time, the model shows important mitigation potential across all regions, species and production systems by using technologies and practices already available.

What is the future of GLEAM?

To provide reliable, up-to-date, well referenced information, the GLEAM model is continuously updated with new input data from countries, case studies, and the scientific literature. The methods for estimating greenhouse gas emissions follow the latest IPCC guidelines and are updated as new guidelines are released.

Key areas for refinements in the methodology include the estimation of feed rations to account for seasonality of feed availability, and stronger linkages between feed quality and animal performance. This will help improve the accuracy of simulations of direct greenhouse gas emissions and the potential for mitigation through changes in diet.

Changes in diet, like other mitigation interventions, are associated with costs. Developments are underway to facilitate benefit-cost analysis of different interventions to help prioritise actions.