The Global Environmental Impacts of Dutch Dietary Change

The environmental impacts of a nation’s food system are not only confined within its borders but extend across an international food supply chain. Impacts are highly dependent on consumption and a transition towards more plant-based food is a key pillar for reducing global environmental pressures, especially in high-income countries. Current studies often overlook intersectoral responses and the detailed spatial distribution of environmental spillovers across global food supply chains. We apply a consumption-based environmental assessment that traces environmental impacts to the locations where they occur across the global supply chain that supplies food to the Netherlands. Using the Food and Agriculture Biomass Input Output (FABIO) model, we quantify the global changes in six environmental impact categories (land use, blue water use, green water use, greenhouse gas emissions, phosphorous application and nitrogen application) brought about by shifting Dutch food consumption to an EAT-Lancet diet against the dietary patterns recorded in 2020. We then evaluate the extent to which these impacts could be reduced under a Dutch dietary shift, from the perspective of each producing country. This shift results in global impact reduction across six impact categories, with the greatest reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (-67%). Notably, drivers of decreasing impacts occur in production stage of various animal feed from reducing animal-based food demand (mainly bovine meat and dairy food).  This Dutch dietary change can bring more environmental reductions outside the Netherlands driven by largely reducing bovine meat consumption and feed production. Western European suppliers to the Dutch food system benefits the most in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, landuse, green water and nutrient application. Our findings indicate that Dutch dietary policies may deliver a substantial share of their environmental benefits outside the Netherlands, in food‑exporting countries. This suggests that national food policies do not act in isolation but can reinforce the environmental sustainability of neighbouring and trade-partner countries by lowering the externalized impacts of domestic consumption.