Abstract
Even though enormous expectations for greenhouse gas mitigation in the land use sector exist at the same time worries about potential implications for sustainable development have been raised as many Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are closely tied to developments in the sector. Here we assess the implications of achieving selected key SDG indicators for Zero Hunger, Clean Water and Sanitation, Responsible Consumption and Production, and Life on Land on the land-based climate change mitigation potential. We find that protecting highly biodiverse ecosystems has profound impacts on biomass potentials (−30% at >12 US dollar per gigajoule) while other SDGs mainly affect greenhouse gas abatement potentials. Achieving SDGs delivers synergies with greenhouse gas abatement and may even in the absence of additional mitigation policies allow to realize up to 25% of the expected greenhouse gas abatement from land use required to stay on track with the 1.5 °C target until 2050. Future land use mitigation policies should consider and take advantage of these synergies across SDGs.
Highlights
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set an agenda for the sustainable management of social, physical, and ecological elements of the Earth system and attempt to guide and monitor progress along 17 goals and 169 specific targets (Griggs et al 2013)
Model results show that the global primary biomass potential from forests and short rotation tree plantations for energy use is decreased to 170 EJ yr−1 at 25 USD GJ−1 when considering selected SDGs as compared to 240 EJ yr−1 without SDGs (figure 1(a)
We find that the SDG induced biomass reduction at a biomass price for bioenergy of 25 USD GJ−1could translate into reduced bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCs) mitigation of around 3.2 GtCO2 yr−1 by 2050 if BECCs is not substituted by other mitigation technologies
Summary
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set an agenda for the sustainable management of social, physical, and ecological elements of the Earth system and attempt to guide and monitor progress along 17 goals and 169 specific targets (Griggs et al 2013). Integrated Assessment Models (IAM) that are used to develop climate stabilization pathways have consistent perception on the net emission profile and energy portfolio required to achieve climate stabilization costefficiently (IPCC 2018, Rogelj et al 2018) This has direct implications for the required land-based mitigation efforts (agriculture, forestry and other land use sector—AFOLU) through (i) supply of biomass for bioenergy and (ii) reduction of land use related greenhouse gases (GHGs). IAMs anticipate an up to fivefold increase in total primary biomass demand for energy by 2050 in the Shared Socio-economic Pathway (SSP) to stay on track with the 1.5 ◦C target (Rogelj et al 2018) Such large scale deployment of bioenergy may trigger environmental and social trade-offs such as increased deforestation and emissions, nitrogen losses, increased irrigation water demand, and food prices without accompanying policies (Calvin et al 2014, Bonsch et al 2016, Humpenöder et al 2018, Hasegawa et al 2020).
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