Demand for animal products is rising fast. By 2050, consumption of meat and dairy is expected to have risen 76 per cent and 65 per cent respectively against a 2005–07 baseline, compared with 40 per cent for cereals.Currently, the biggest meat-consuming countries are China, the European Union, the United States and Brazil; major dairy consumers are China, India, the EU and the United States. Growth in meat consumption in China is projected to be over four times that of the next fastest-growing consumer, Brazil, in absolute terms. Negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have overlooked livestock. Efforts to establish a specific workstream on agriculture have failed, and talks have instead focused on a framework for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and enhancing forest carbon stocks in developing countries (REDD+). Of potentially more immediate relevance to livestock, the Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture – comprising 16 countries and 37 organizations – was launched at the UN Climate Summit on 24 September in New York. This counts among its objectives the ‘reduction and/or removal’ of agricultural emissions, though the extent to which it will address livestock remains to be seen. International finance for agricultural mitigation is also limited. Agriculture accounts for a tiny proportion of projects under the Clean Development Mechanism – a market-based mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol which allows countries to fund emissions-reduction projects in developing countries that count towards reduction commitments at home. Furthermore, agriculture receives only four per cent of the total mitigation finance provided by the multilateral development banks.