Avery Cohn

Cattle ranching intensification in Brazil can reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by sparing land from deforestation

Significance Could the intensification of pasture-based cattle ranching allow Brazil to protect its forests and reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while increasing its agricultural production? Would these benefits be substantially undermined by increased deforestation and GHGs triggered abroad? We model two policies for increasing cattle ranching productivity in Brazil: a tax on conventional pasture and a subsidy for semi-intensive pasture. Either policy could considerably mitigate global GHGs by limiting future deforestation in Brazil. The GHG benefits would be roughly ten times greater than the emissions triggered by policies stemming from (i) increased cattle production abroad (under the tax) and (ii) increased beef consumption (under the subsidy). Agricultural intensification policies may help emerging economies to balance agricultural development and forest protection. This study examines whether policies to encourage cattle ranching intensification in Brazil can abate global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by sparing land from deforestation. We use an economic model of global land use to investigate, from 2010 to 2030, the global agricultural outcomes, land use changes, and GHG abatement resulting from two potential Brazilian policies: a tax on cattle from conventional pasture and a subsidy for cattle from semi-intensive pasture. We find that under either policy, Brazil could achieve considerable sparing of forests and abatement of GHGs, in line with its national policy targets. The land spared, particularly under the tax, is far less than proportional to the productivity increased. However, the tax, despite prompting less adoption of semi-intensive ranching, delivers slightly more forest sparing and GHG abatement than the subsidy. This difference is explained by increased deforestation associated with increased beef consumption under the subsidy and reduced deforestation associated with reduced beef consumption under the tax. Complementary policies to directly limit deforestation could help limit these effects. GHG abatement from either the tax or subsidy appears inexpensive but, over time, the tax would become cheaper than the subsidy. A revenue-neutral combination of the policies could be an element of a sustainable development strategy for Brazil and other emerging economies seeking to balance agricultural development and forest protection.

Recent cropping frequency, expansion, and abandonment in Mato Grosso, Brazil had selective land characteristics

This letter uses satellite remote sensing to examine patterns of cropland expansion, cropland abandonment, and changing cropping frequency in Mato Grosso, Brazil from 2001 to 2011. During this period, Mato Grosso emerged as a globally important center of agricultural production. In 2001, 3.3 million hectares of mechanized agriculture were cultivated in Mato Grosso, of which 500 000 hectares had two commercial crops per growing season (double cropping). By 2011, Mato Grosso had 5.8 million hectares of mechanized agriculture, of which 2.9 million hectares were double cropped. We found these agricultural changes to be selective with respect to land attributes?significant differences (p?<?0.001) existed between the land attributes of agriculture versus non-agriculture, single cropping versus double cropping, and expansion versus abandonment. Many of the land attributes (elevation, slope, maximum temperature, minimum temperature, initial soy transport costs, and soil) that were associated with an increased likelihood of expansion were associated with a decreased likelihood of abandonment (p?<?0.001). While land similar to agriculture and double cropping in 2001 was much more likely to be developed for agriculture than all other land, new cropland shifted to hotter, drier, lower locations that were more isolated from agricultural infrastructure (p?<?0.001). The scarcity of high quality remaining agricultural land available for agricultural expansion in Mato Grosso could be contributing to the slowdown in agricultural expansion observed there over 2006 to 2011. Land use policy analyses should control for land scarcity constraints on agricultural expansion.

The climate impacts of bioenergy systems depend on market and regulatory policy contexts.

Biomass can help reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by displacing petroleum in the transportation sector, by displacing fossil-based electricity, and by sequestering atmospheric carbon. Which use mitigates the most emissions depends on market and regulatory contexts outside the scope of attributional life cycle assessments. We show that bioelectricitys advantage over liquid biofuels depends on the GHG intensity of the electricity displaced. Bioelectricity that displaces coal-fired electricity could reduce GHG emissions, but bioelectricity that displaces wind electricity could increase GHG emissions. The electricity displaced depends upon existing infrastructure and policies affecting the electric grid. These findings demonstrate how model assumptions about whether the vehicle fleet and bioenergy use are fixed or free parameters constrain the policy questions an analysis can inform. Our bioenergy life cycle assessment can inform questions about a bioenergy mandates optimal allocation between liquid fuels and electricity generation, but questions about the optimal level of bioenergy use require analyses with different assumptions about fixed and free parameters.

Agricultural Certification as a Conservation Tool in Latin America

Along agricultural frontiers, non-governmental organizations are developing agricultural certification systems for use as conservation tools. In this article, we propose a typology of certification systems that we use to frame a critical examination of the efficacy of these systems and their limitations in achieving conservation goals. On the basis of these findings, we recommend improved management practices. Our analysis draws on case studies that examine the use of certification to regulate two very distinct production systems: smallholder shade coffee cooperatives in El Salvador and industrial scale soy and beef operations in the Brazilian Amazon. Despite their disparate contexts, both case studies demonstrate that agricultural certification to achieve conservation goals is difficult to design, implement, and evaluate. Certifiers must enroll consumers and firms who do not prioritize conservation goals, navigate scientific uncertainty regarding best conservation practices, and also market their brand as different from the conventional products. Yet certification continues to expand. In order to grow legitimacy, maximize long-term efficacy, and to achieve stated conservation goals, agricultural certifiers should focus their efforts on key leverage points along supply chains where changes made can have meaningful conservation impacts. They should straightforwardly communicate the limitations, kinks, and challenges of their systems alongside claims of successes without overstating the impacts of their schemes as part of marketing strategies. In doing so they can help to inform and advance environmental governance of agricultural production systems.

“Are Brazil's Deforesters Avoiding Detection?”

Rates of deforestation reported by Brazil’s official deforestation monitoring system have declined dramatically in the Brazilian Amazon. Much of Brazil’s success in its fight against deforestation has been credited to a series of policy changes put into place between 2004 and 2008. In this research, we posit that one of these policies, the decision to use the country’s official system for monitoring forest loss in the Amazon as a policing tool, has incentivized landowners to deforest in ways and places that evade Brazil’s official monitoring and enforcement system. As a consequence, we a) show or b) provide several pieces of suggestive evidence that recent successes in protecting monitored forests in the Brazilian Amazon may be doing less to protect the region’s forests than previously assumed.

Climate Voting in the US Congress: The Power of Public Concern

abstract In the United States, few constituents know and understand climate policy, prioritize it as a political topic, or let their voting decisions depend on it. In these conditions, representatives would not be expected to pay heed to constituents’ climate concern in their voting decisions. Still, even after controlling for the presence of interest groups, campaign finance, and legislators’ party affiliation and ideology, there is a consistent link between public opinion and votes on cap-and-trade legislation in the House (and to a lesser degree in the Senate). The same is true when public opinion is simulated based on pre-vote district characteristics. Explanations for these findings are discussed.

Addressing rainfall data selection uncertainty using connections between rainfall and streamflow

Studies of the hydroclimate at regional scales rely on spatial rainfall data products, derived from remotely-sensed (RS) and in-situ (IS, rain gauge) observations. Because regional rainfall cannot be directly measured, spatial data products are biased. These biases pose a source of uncertainty in environmental analyses, attributable to the choices made by data-users in selecting a representation of rainfall. We use the rainforest-savanna transition region in Brazil to show differences in the statistics describing rainfall across nine RS and interpolated-IS daily rainfall datasets covering the period of 1998–2013. These differences propagate into estimates of temporal trends in monthly rainfall and descriptive hydroclimate indices. Rainfall trends from different datasets are inconsistent at river basin scales, and the magnitude of index differences is comparable to the estimated bias in global climate model projections. To address this uncertainty, we evaluate the correspondence of different rainfall datasets with streamflow from 89 river basins. We demonstrate that direct empirical comparisons between rainfall and streamflow provide a method for evaluating rainfall dataset performance across multiple areal (basin) units. These results highlight the need for users of rainfall datasets to quantify this “data selection uncertainty” problem, and either justify data use choices, or report the uncertainty in derived results.

Commercial Agriculture in Tropical Environments

The tropics are a critical nexus of important environmental services and resources, productive lands that are critical to feeding the planet in years to come, and rural economies beset by disease and malnutrition, and in need of economic development. This special issue synthesizes a series of multidisciplinary dialogues aiming to examine the complex challenge of tropical agricultural systems. The work contained five principle themes: (a) The future of tropical agriculture is vital for developing world economies and the global environment in ways that scholars are still working to characterize. (b) The tropics are highly socioeconomically and environmentally heterogeneous. (c) We expect sociocultural and institutional factors to strongly shape the future of tropical agriculture and the environment. (d) Sustainable tropical agriculture means linking smallholders, the vast bulk of farmers, with commercial agriculture, the vast bulk of agribusiness. (d) Scholarship from the environmental sciences can help to navigate many cross-cutting issues facing sustainable agricultural development.

Leveraging Climate Regulation by Ecosystems for Agriculture to Promote Ecosystem Stewardship

One in every five patches of tropical forest near agriculture in Brazil appears to contribute more to agricultural production by preventing crop-killing extreme heat exposure than it could produce if it were converted to cropland itself. In this commentary, I refer to this and other forms of climate regulation by ecosystems and beneficial for agriculture as E4A. E4A is a readily employable and largely untapped concept for protecting and restoring tropical ecosystems. The promise of E4A lies in demonstrating sizeable production-protection synergies relevant for critical actors. Using a consultative research process, I gauged the current and future status of E4A science and action in tropical land use decision-making. Stakeholders flagged unmet demand for E4A in support of decisions tied to numerous regulatory, governance, and business processes. Results from a complementary literature review revealed gaps in research, advocacy, and entrepreneurship. I close by discussing opportunities to relieve E4A pain points to catalyze tropical ecosystem stewardship.