Giving Compass' Take:

• In this story from Global Citizen, author Beh Lih Yi argues for limiting pork consumption. If Chinese consumers halved the amount of pork they eat, they would reduce China's greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent.

• Using the Year of the Pig to convince Chinese citizens to avoid pork may be successful in the short term, but how can environmental advocates reduce consumption in the long term?

• To learn more about how the best strategies to change public behavior, click here.

As Chinese people celebrate the new Year of the Pig this week, environmental campaigners are urging them to eat less pork and help save the planet.

China consumes more meat than any other country and accounts for half the world's consumption of pork, which is used in everything from dumplings and stir-fries to hotpots.

That has helped make it the world's biggest emitter of climate-warming greenhouse gases — according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), livestock are responsible for about 14.5% of global emissions.

"Chinese emissions can be reduced by almost 10% in the next decade if Chinese people just ate half as much meat," said Jen Leung, China climate director at the US-based charity WildAid.

"So just try eating a little less pork in honour of a healthy Year of the Pig," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Experts said people were unlikely to give up on their pork dumplings any time soon in China, where meat is still associated with wealth and status.

"It's quite challenging because culturally there are quite a lot of values attached to being able to eat meat," Beau Damen, an expert on climate change at the FAO in Bangkok, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"But one thing consumers do have to keep in mind is that choices about what we eat do have a direct impact on the environment," he warned.

Read the full article about pork by Beh Lih Yi at Global Citizen