Abstract
Abstract This paper jointly evaluates the greenhouse gas emissions and economic impacts from producing biofuels in Tanzania. Sequentially-linked models capture natural resource constraints; emissions from land use change; economywide growth linkages; and household poverty. Results indicate that there are economic incentives to convert unused lands to sugarcane-ethanol production, but only grasslands (not forests) have a reasonable carbon payback period. There are also strong socioeconomic reasons to involve smallholders in feedstock production in order to reduce rural poverty, especially since our results indicate that biofuels have little effect on food production. Yet smallholders require more land than large-scale plantations and so face more binding natural resource and emissions constraints. Overall, environmental constraints alter the socioeconomically optimal biofuel strategy for Tanzania by limiting potential poverty reduction. Unlike previous studies, our integrated assessment suggests that a mixed farming system with greater emphasis on large-scale plantations is more appropriate for producing sugarcane-ethanol in Tanzania.
Highlights
Producing biofuels in developing countries is a contested issue
We start by discussing emissions that are generated in the first year of the land use change, and discuss how average emissions change over time as more ethanol is produced
Sugarcane-ethanol produced on deforested lands has a much longer carbon payback period of 15–27 years, even though we assume that most of the forest biomass is exported rather than burned locally. These results indicate that it is possible for Tanzania to contribute to climate change mitigation by producing biofuels that can replace fossil fuels, this depends crucially on land use change and the timeframe for carbon accounting
Summary
Producing biofuels in developing countries is a contested issue. Some view biofuels as a threat to food security and caution against local production (Runge and Senauer 2007; Molony and Smith 2010). There is a large literature on the global effects of biofuels, including food production, land use change and GHG emissions (see, for example, Rosegrant et al 2008; Timilsina et al 2012; Timilsina and Mevel 2012) These studies typically focus on biofuel production in more developed countries and consider its implications for commodity trade and prices in low-income countries. There are no country studies that quantitatively examine the joint effect of biofuels production on GHG emissions and socioeconomic outcomes This is an important omission since many developing countries are promoting biofuels, but emissions constraints could alter their choice of technologies and institutional arrangements and, by doing so, limit biofuel’s effect on economic growth, food security and poverty. The final section summarizes our findings and discusses their implications for biofuels policy and future research
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