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Cities play a fundamental role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and advancing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. In this context, public authorities need tools to help in identifying the best set of available solutions for the urban environment. Here, we developed an approach to help decision makers in evaluating sustainable solutions, considering aspects such as emission rate, economic attractiveness, job creation, and local competitiveness in an intersectoral fashion. To rank the best solutions, we developed a new methodology that links integrated assessment models (IAMs) to the available solutions at the Innovation Observatory for Sustainable Cities (OICS) database and applied it to Brazil. Our results show that the solutions with the greatest impact were often related to new technologies, for example, renewable energy, which depends on institutional and financial arrangements that are beyond the administrative capacity of the vast majority of municipalities. Despite these limitations, Brazilian cities can act as regulators or provide financial incentives and advocacy to promote sustainable solutions in the urban environment.

This paper projects and analyzes the regional impacts of climate change on the agricultural productivity of family farming and large-scale agriculture in Brazil between 2021 and 2050, using the RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 scenarios. The methodology adopted consists of a cross-sectional estimation of a production function in which agricultural productivity is determined by climatic, geographic, and productive factors. The study contributes to the literature by disaggregating agricultural production into family farming and large-scale agriculture, indicating the magnitude and direction of impacts by crops and regions in Brazil, a country with a great territorial dimension and relevant and heterogeneous agricultural production. The results indicate that the agricultural productivity of family farming is more sensitive and therefore this type of producer could be more vulnerable to the phenomenon. On average, the effects will be negative in the North/Northeast regions and for cassava, maize, beans, and soybeans, with possible impacts on deforestation and on food supply. Productivity gains are expected in the southern region and for the cultivation of sugar cane and soybeans. Deterioration of food security of the vulnerable farmers and regional disparities may increase in Brazil.

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