Applying Occam's razor to global agricultural land use change

Engström, Kerstin; Rounsevell, Mark; Murray-Rust, Dave; Hardacre, Catherine; Alexander, Peter; Cui, Xufeng; Palmer, Paul I.; Arneth, Almut

doi:10.1016/j.envsoft.2015.10.015

Cited by 30 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…2.2.3 and Engström et al, 2016a), depending further on each scenario's technological growth, economic development and technology transfer rate. Finally, changes in total cropland are assumed to be proportional to changes in cereal land, using the actual proportions of cereal land to total cropland in 2000 (Engström et al, 2016b). In previous applications of PLUM (Engström et al, 2016a) the static feed ratio (assumption as to how much of the consumed meat is produced from cereal feeds vs. grazing) was identified as a cause for underestimation of cropland demand for scenarios with meat-rich diets.…”

Section: Land Use Model and Coupling To The Climate-economy Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The land use model PLUM (Parsimonious Land-Use Model) simulates changes in cropland coverage on the basis of changes in cereal, meat and milk consumption and changes in cereal yield in 168 countries (Engström et al, 2016b). Calculations of food demand are dependent on population and economic development and are described by statistical relationships revealed by historical country-level statistics from reported data (FAOSTAT, 2016).…”

Section: Land Use Model and Coupling To The Climate-economy Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Impacts of climate mitigation strategies in the energy sector on global land use and carbon balance

et al. 2017

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Abstract. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to limit damage to the global economy climate-change-induced and secure the livelihoods of future generations requires ambitious mitigation strategies. The introduction of a global carbon tax on fossil fuels is tested here as a mitigation strategy to reduce atmospheric CO 2 concentrations and radiative forcing. Taxation of fossil fuels potentially leads to changed composition of energy sources, including a larger relative contribution from bioenergy. Further, the introduction of a mitigation strategy reduces climate-change-induced damage to the global economy, and thus can indirectly affect consumption patterns and investments in agricultural technologies and yield enhancement. Here we assess the implications of changes in bioenergy demand as well as the indirectly caused changes in consumption and crop yields for global and national cropland area and terrestrial biosphere carbon balance. We apply a novel integrated assessment modelling framework, combining three previously published models (a climate-economy model, a socio-economic land use model and an ecosystem model). We develop reference and mitigation scenarios based on the narratives and key elements of the shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs). Taking emissions from the land use sector into account, we find that the introduction of a global carbon tax on the fossil fuel sector is an effective mitigation strategy only for scenarios with low population development and strong sustainability criteria (SSP1 "Taking the green road"). For scenarios with high population growth, low technological development and bioenergy production the high demand for cropland causes the terrestrial biosphere to switch from being a carbon sink to a source by the end of the 21st century.

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Section: Land Use Model and Coupling To The Climate-economy Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Land Use Model and Coupling To The Climate-economy Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of climate mitigation strategies in the energy sector on global land use and carbon balance

et al. 2017

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“…Future NPP demand can be projected by applying a set of consistent assumptions for future societal and economic developments described in socio-economic scenarios. We simulated future NPP demand for each country of the greater Sahel with PLUM, which is based on a conceptual model of socio-economic processes that determine global agricultural land use change (Engström et al, 2016b). These processes include population and economic development, the consumption of cereal, milk, and meat dependent on economic development, lifestyle and diet choice, and the development of cereal yields dependent on technological change.…”

Section: Npp Demandmentioning

confidence: 99%

Future supply and demand of net primary production in the Sahel

et al. 2017

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Abstract. In the 21st century, climate change in combination with increasing demand, mainly from population growth, will exert greater pressure on the ecosystems of the Sahel to supply food and feed resources. The balance between supply and demand, defined as the annual biomass required for human consumption, serves as a key metric for quantifying basic resource shortfalls over broad regions.Here we apply an exploratory modelling framework to analyse the variations in the timing and geography of different NPP (net primary production) supply-demand scenarios, with distinct assumptions determining supply and demand, for the 21st century Sahel. We achieve this by coupling a simple NPP supply model forced with projections from four representative concentration pathways with a global, reduced-complexity demand model driven by socio-economic data and assumptions derived from five shared socio-economic pathways.For the scenario that deviates least from current socio-economic and climate trends, we find that per capita NPP begins to outstrip supply in the 2040s, while by 2050 half the countries in the Sahel experience NPP shortfalls. We also find that despite variations in the timing of the onset of NPP shortfalls, demand cannot consistently be met across the majority of scenarios. Moreover, large between-country variations are shown across the scenarios, in which by the year 2050 some countries consistently experience shortage or surplus, while others shift from surplus to shortage. At the local level (i.e. grid cell), hotspots of total NPP shortfall consistently occur in the same locations across all scenarios but vary in size and magnitude. These hotspots are linked to population density and high demand. For all scenarios, total simulated NPP supply doubles by 2050 but is outpaced by increasing demand due to a combination of population growth and the adoption of diets rich in animal products. Finally, variations in the timing of the onset and end of supply shortfalls stem from the assumptions that underpin the shared socio-economic pathways rather than the representative concentration pathways.Our results suggest that the UN sustainable development goals for eradicating hunger are at high risk for failure. This emphasizes the importance of policy interventions such as the implementation of sustainable and healthy diets, family planning, reducing yield gaps, and encouraging the transfer of resources to impoverished areas via trade relations.

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“…The need of a physical land use balance is expressed in terms of technological changes in cropland use and yields achieved (Kuemmerle et al 2013;Engström Environmental and Ecological Aspects in the Overall… 163 et al 2016) and as limits of bioenergy production (Scarlat et al 2015). A global land use assessment by UNEP indicated a need for reduction in land use intensity in the EU, so as to reach a global land use target based on the safe operating space (UNEP 2014).…”

Section: The Policy Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental and Ecological Aspects in the Overall Assessment of Bioeconomy

Székacs

2017

J Agric Environ Ethics

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Bioeconomy solutions potentially reduce the utilization demand of natural resources, and therefore, represent steps towards circular economy, but are not per se equivalent to sustainability. Thus, production may remain to be achieved against losses in natural resources or at other environmental costs, and materials produced by bioeconomy are not necessarily biodegradable. As a consequence, the assumption that emerging bioeconomy by itself provides an environmentally sustainable economy is not justified, as technologies do not necessarily become sustainable merely through their conversion to using renewable resources for their production. A source of the above assumption is that the utility of bioeconomy is mostly assessed in interaction between technology developers and economists, resulting in biased assessment with private commercial technology benefits being included, but environmental costs, especially longer term ones, not being sufficiently considered in the economic models. A possible solution to this conceptual contradiction may come from bioethics, as a strong concept in environmental ethics is that no technological intervention can be imposed on nature beyond its receptive capacity. To achieve a better balanced analysis of bioeconomy, environmental and ecological, as well as non-economic social aspects, need to be included in the overall assessment.

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Applying Occam's razor to global agricultural land use change

Cited by 30 publications

References 71 publications

Impacts of climate mitigation strategies in the energy sector on global land use and carbon balance

Impacts of climate mitigation strategies in the energy sector on global land use and carbon balance

Future supply and demand of net primary production in the Sahel

Environmental and Ecological Aspects in the Overall Assessment of Bioeconomy

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