The Paris pledges and the energy-water-land nexus in Latin America: Exploring implications of greenhouse gas emission reductions

Abstract

In the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations worldwide pledged emissions reductions (Nationally Determined Contributions—NDCs) to avert the threat of climate change, and agreed to periodically review these pledges to strengthen their level of ambition. Previous studies have analyzed NDCs largely in terms of their implied contribution to limit global warming, their implications on the energy sector or on mitigation costs. Nevertheless, a gap in the literature exists regarding the understanding of implications of the NDCs on countries’ Energy-Water-Land nexus resource systems. The present paper explores this angle within the regional context of Latin America by employing the Global Change Assessment Model, a state-of-the-art integrated assessment model capable of representing key system-wide interactions among nexus sectors and mitigation policies. By focusing on Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia, we stress potential implications on national-level water demands depending on countries’ strategies to enforce energy-related emissions reductions and their interplays with the land sector. Despite the differential implications of the Paris pledges on each country, increased water demands for crop and biomass irrigation and for electricity generation stand out as potential trade-offs that may emerge under the NDC policy. Hence, this study underscores the need of considering a nexus resource planning framework (known as “Nexus Approach”) in the forthcoming NDCs updating cycles as a mean to contribute toward sustainable development.

Water Resources Change in Central-Western Argentina Under the Paris Agreement Warming Targets

“…In the case of Argentina, the intended Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) of the country had an unconditional GHG emissions reduction of 15% by 2030 compared to a business as usual (BAU) projection, with an additional reduction of 15% conditioned to international financial support (Dash and Gim, 2019). With the ratification of the Paris Agreement in 2016, Argentina presented a revised NDC with a more ambitious target of 18% reduction in all GHGs below BAU for 2030, not exceeding the net emission of 483 MtCO 2 e (Santos Da Silva et al, 2019). The revised conditional target increased to a reduction of 37% by 2030.…”

“…The revised conditional target increased to a reduction of 37% by 2030. Nevertheless, these expected reductions are far from being fair and ambitious to achieve the Paris Agreement goals (Robiou du Pont et al, 2017), with one of the lowest targets of GHG emissions reduction of Latin America (Santos Da Silva et al, 2019) and requiring further actions to meet the NDC (den Elzen et al, 2019). All the Parties are expected to communicate new or updated NDCs by 2020, in line with more ambitious mitigation and adaptation policies (Farinosi et al, 2020).…”

“…An examination of the historical development of renewable energy policy regime in Argentina showed that the policy density-the extent to which a certain policy area is covered by governmental activities-ranked among the lowest compared to Brazil, Canada, Mexico and USA, while the policy intensity-the strength the policy has toward meeting specific goals-showed one of the highest scores (Pischke et al, 2019). There is limited growth prospect in nuclear capacity for Argentina (Santos Da Silva et al, 2019), although some deep decarbonization pathways project an increase in the electricity generation through nuclear power in 2050 (Bataille et al, 2020). The CWA has the potential to provide solar and wind energy as part of this transition to a higher proportion of renewables in the near future.…”

“…Therefore, in view of the expected changes it is advised a shift in irrigation practices toward more modern systems based on drip irrigation. Using two NDC scenarios, Santos Da Silva et al (2019) projected a significant increase in the water demand for agricultural irrigation in Argentina in the coming decades, as a result of the expansion of the croplands and the increase in crop production, factors that are expected to play a significant role over the Lowlands east of 67 • W. In this sense, the projected increases in precipitation, total soil moisture and runoff might compensate for the expected increase in water needs due to the agricultural expansion, although the evaporative demand is expected to increase too, setting a complex configuration in terms of the irrigation demand for this region. Moreover, the fraction of land used for bioenergy crop production could increase across the Eastern Lowlands, in line with the projected agricultural intensification for 2030 over Argentina (Piquer-Rodríguez et al, 2018), particularly considering biofuel production based on soybean.…”

“…To achieve the 2 • C goal, the anthropogenic CO 2 emissions eventually must cease, including decarbonization options and a massive transformation of the global energy system (Sanderson et al, 2016). For that purpose, nations worldwide pledged emissions reductions and agreed to periodically review these pledges to strengthen their level of ambition (Santos Da Silva et al, 2019). These mitigation alternatives are intended to be performed on the basis of equity, and in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty (Mba et al, 2018).…”