Abstract
Livestock is one of the fastest-growing sectors in agriculture. If carefully managed, they have potential opportunities for economic growth and poverty reduction in rural areas. South Asian countries, i.e. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, are home to more than 1.58 billion people, having a large majority living in poverty and rearing livestock. In this paper, we compare the demand of livestock meat, i.e. beef, mutton and poultry, for 2030 for the six South Asian countries and analyse this demand with respect to three factors, i.e. (1) water scarcity (WS), (2) CO2 fertilization and (3) climatic-change vulnerability. We carry out the analysis using related data from diverse sources, which were extracted, transformed and integrated before usage. The collective impact of the three main factors had an overall positive effect on the production of meat for Sri Lanka but an adverse impact on Afghanistan. High similarity was found between CO2 fertilization and WS, i.e. higher than that between production of beef and mutton for the six countries considered. Overall, the three factors do not seem to be favourable for the six South Asian countries considered. This point lead to the possibility of a vegetarian predicted 2030, with poor livestock holders expected to remain poor.