Abstract
The cultivation of marginal lands for bioenergy production has recently become a topic of research interest for the agronomic and agricultural economy scientific communities. The growing availability of arable land in the Mediterranean regions, as a consequence of the decline of cereal cropping systems and grain legume, provides ample opportunities for performing successful feedstock production on unmanaged areas. This paper seeks to capture and analyze ongoing and emerging questions concerning bioenergy production on marginal lands in the Mediterranean area in a framework of sustainability indicators. A qualitative methodology was adopted to evaluate the effectiveness of eight critical issues that bio-energy developers, scholars and policymakers should consider in terms of agronomic, techno-economic and methodological practices for growing bioenergy feedstock. The issues investigated on selected case studies are: Greenhouse gas emissions; soil quality; land restoration and phytoremediation capacity; water use and efficiency; biodiversity; land use/cover changes; farmers’ willingness and acceptance of new agro-system, and profitability of value chain. Starting from an in-depth analysis of the definition of marginal land from the perspective of ecosystem service cascade, we synthesize how these challenges are nowadays addressed and which are the key bottlenecks, trends and potential directions for guiding future research into bioenergy production in the Mediterranean regions. The findings of this study suggest that dedicated energy crops can be grown on marginal lands with substantial positive effects in terms of sustainability aspects, although more efforts should be carried out through agronomic research especially on water use efficiency and biodiversity conservation, as well as by national and EU institutions and policies for promoting economic opportunities and integration with surrounding agro-ecosystems and farmers’ involvement. Developing a site-specific landscape design with the use of Life Cycle Assessment and certification schemes with sustainability indicators is of primary importance for the effective bioenergy production on marginal lands.
Highlights
As a resource base for the bioeconomy, agricultural biomass production plays a pivotal role in the production of food and feed, as well as raw materials for a number of end-products in biorefineries [1]
In light of the aforementioned, in the future support schemes (e.g. Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) supports) and business models for mobilizing financing and attracting investors should be more aligned with Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) emissions, ecosystem services and sustainability indicators, avoiding criticism raised for the biogas sector in the European Union (EU) regarding tradeoffs on land use pressure for biomass production, market distortions and environmental impacts [130,131]
In this study we analyze the concept of marginal land from the perspective of ecosystem service cascade model, fostering the use of tailored sustainability indicators developed by The Global Bioenergy Partnership for bioenergy production in the EU Mediterranean basin
Summary
As a resource base for the bioeconomy, agricultural biomass production plays a pivotal role in the production of food and feed, as well as raw materials for a number of end-products in biorefineries [1]. A key open issue concerns how to best allocate these crops within traditional agricultural systems, resolving at the field scale the controversies on land use scenarios (land sharing vs land sparing) [19], but at the same time preserving and enhancing ecosystem services in a framework of new nature-based solutions [20], to turn environmental, social and economic challenges into innovation opportunities This is a global debate, new and smart opportunities and solutions are urgent, especially for the Mediterranean agricultural systems and farmers, considering that the expected effects of climate change to 2050 could result in much lower farm net incomes in Southern regions compared to Northern regions [6,21]. The final section serves as a platform for setting the context, to share and emphasize strengths, recommendations and strategic suggestions for planners, practitioners and policymakers for better designing and managing of sustainable bioenergy supply chains on marginal lands
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