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

Silvia R Santos Da Silva,Caleb J Braun,Raul Muñoz-Castillo,Mohamad Hejazi,Jill Horing,Haewon C Mcjeon,Russell Horowitz,James A Edmonds,Pralit Patel,Fernando Miralles-Wilhelm,Sean Turner,Robert Link,Page Kyle,Alison Delgado,Leon E Clarke

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0215013

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.

Highlights

The “Nexus Approach” was defined by [1] as a conceptual paradigm to tackle the inherent linkages among the energy, water, food and land sectors
We explore national level implications of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in the major Latin American economies within a nexus perspective that seeks to highlight the inseparable links between sectors while drawing attention to the emergence of potential macro-scale trade-offs among physical systems
This study presents an integrated assessment of potential implications of mitigation strategies consistent with the Paris Agreement architecture on the EWL nexus resource systems in Latin America

Summary

Introduction

The “Nexus Approach” was defined by [1] as a conceptual paradigm to tackle the inherent linkages among the energy, water, food and land sectors. The ‘NDC NOCCS’ scenario is intended to represent a future in which the various limitations surrounding the large-scale deployment of CCS (to be discussed ) could not be overcome and mitigation must rely on other low-carbon sources In both policy scenarios, the implementation of the NDCs in GCAM was carried out by means of an economy-wide emissions constraint. As assessed by previous studies [34,35,36], the NDCs are associated with large uncertainties regarding the actual mitigation role of the land sector These uncertainties relate to the following issues: definition of baselines, historical emissions and removal sources in national inventories; lack of information on accounting methods; absence of quantifiable details of measures or specific targets, among others.

Results and discussion

Conclusions

Background