Combining mitigation strategies to increase co-benefits for biodiversity and food security

Rémi Prudhomme,Thierry Brunelle,Patrice Dumas,Andy Purvis,Paul Leadley,Harold Levrel,Ricardo Gonzalez,Adriana De Palma

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/abb10a

Abstract

World agriculture needs to find the right balance to cope with the trilemma between feeding a growing population, reducing its impact on biodiversity and minimizing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this paper, we evaluate a broad range of scenarios that achieve 4.3 GtCO2,eq/year GHG mitigation in the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land-Use (AFOLU) sector by 2100. Scenarios include varying mixes of three GHG mitigation policies: second-generation biofuel production, dietary change and reforestation of pasture. We find that focusing mitigation on a single policy can lead to positive results for a single indicator of food security or biodiversity conservation, but with significant negative side effects on others. A balanced portfolio of all three mitigation policies, while not optimal for any single criterion, minimizes trade-offs by avoiding large negative effects on food security and biodiversity conservation. At the regional scale, the trade-off seen globally between biodiversity and food security is nuanced by different regional contexts.

Highlights

Land is a multi-purpose asset that may involve conflicts in its use
The scatter of points representing the impacts of landbased mitigation scenarios is widely spread over the output space and has concave boundaries, indicating a moderate trade-off between biodiversity and food security for a greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction objective compatible with 2 degrees of global warming
The major contribution of this study is that it is the first explore the full range of combinations of key land-based climate mitigation options—bioenergy, reforestation and dietary change—on biodiversity and food systems

Summary

Introduction

Land is a multi-purpose asset that may involve conflicts in its use. The joint challenges of global food security, climate change mitigation and conservation of biodiversity give a new dimension to this issue, involving new types of trade-offs and synergies while strengthening the global dimension. Assessments based on global land-use models have shown that mitigation policies relying on largescale second-generation biofuel production have important environmental implications and, especially if forest protection measures are implemented, adversely impact food prices (Popp et al 2011, Humpenöder et al 2018, Heck et al 2018a). Combining measures appears to be an appropriate solution to minimize negative effects, but the nature of the combinations promotes either biodiversity or food security (Obersteiner et al 2016, Visconti et al 2016, Humpenöder et al 2018)

Methods

Results

Conclusion