Miguel Brandão

Estimating 20-year land-use change and derived CO2 emissions associated with crops, pasture and forestry in Brazil and each of its 27 states

Abstract Land‐use change (LUC) in Brazil has important implications on global climate change, ecosystem services and biodiversity, and agricultural expansion plays a critical role in this process. Concerns over these issues have led to the need for estimating the magnitude and impacts associated with that, which are increasingly reported in the environmental assessment of products. Currently, there is an extensive debate on which methods are more appropriate for estimating LUC and related emissions and regionalized estimates are lacking for Brazil, which is a world leader in agricultural production (e.g. food, fibres and bioenergy). We developed a method for estimating scenarios of past 20‐year LUC and derived CO2 emission rates associated with 64 crops, pasture and forestry in Brazil as whole and in each of its 27 states, based on time‐series statistics and in accordance with most used carbon‐footprinting standards. The scenarios adopted provide a range between minimum and maximum rates of CO2 emissions from LUC according to different possibilities of land‐use transitions, which can have large impacts in the results. Specificities of Brazil, like multiple cropping and highly heterogeneous carbon stocks, are also addressed. The highest CO2 emission rates are observed in the Amazon biome states and crops with the highest rates are those that have undergone expansion in this region. Some states and crops showing large agricultural areas have low emissions associated, especially in southern and eastern Brazil. Native carbon stocks and time of agricultural expansion are the most decisive factors to the patterns of emissions. Some implications on LUC estimation methods and standards and on agri‐environmental policies are discussed.

On the validity of natural regeneration in determination of land-use baseline

To the editors: We thankMatthew Brander (Brander 2015) for his response to our paper on the necessity of a land-use baseline in attributional LCA (Soimakallio et al. 2015). Brander supports our key argument that a land-use baseline is necessary in attributional LCA (ALCA). However, Brander raises concerns about the appropriateness of ALCA to support decision-making and questions our claim that natural regeneration is the appropriate land-use baseline for ALCA. Brander presents three arguments against natural regeneration: (1) natural regeneration is not natural as it can occur only after human-induced disturbance, (2) natural regeneration overestimates the forgone carbon sequestration if summed over time, and (3) the use of the natural regeneration baseline to quantify the effect of land occupation aligns with consequential, not attributional, LCA. We would like to emphasize that our paper did not aim to engage in the debate on the choice between ALCA and CLCA. Thus, we merely mention that there are arguments for (e.g. Ekvall et al. 2005) and against (e.g. Plevin et al. 2014) the appropriateness of ALCA to support decision-making. We urge researchers to consider which approach best meets the purpose of their study. On the appropriateness of natural regeneration as a land-use baseline in ALCA, we respond to each of Brander’s criticism in turn, in order to consolidate our arguments on the issue.

Life cycle assessment of aquafeed ingredients

PurposeThis study performs an exploratory comparative evaluation of various animal and vegetable protein and lipid sources, used as feed in the aquaculture industry. The ingredients studied include fishmeal (FM) and fish oil (FO) from fisheries by-products, meal and fat by-products from poultry slaughter, FM and FO from Peruvian anchovy capture, and soybean meal and oil. The boundaries studied include the production or capture, the ingredient processing unit and the transport to the unit that processes the ingredients into aquafeeds in Portugal.MethodsThe LCA impact assessment method is the CML-IA baseline V3.04/EU25 and the results were obtained for the characterisation step. Some of the inventory data were collected from a Portuguese company (Savinor) that processes both by-products from local fisheries and by-products from poultry production. Savinor provided data specifically associated with the ingredients’ production. Obtained data were complemented with literature data from: fish capture and poultry production. Inventory data for the production of ingredients from Peruvian anchovy and soybeans were retrieved from literature. It was assumed that the transport of the ingredients produced from Peruvian anchovy, between Lima and Rotterdam, is made in a transoceanic vessel, and it is considered a transport by truck between Rotterdam and Ovar, for soybean ingredients and FM/FO produced from Peruvian anchovy.Results and discussionThis paper shows that poultry meal and poultry fat from poultry slaughter by-products have the larger contribution to all environmental impact categories evaluated, being the production of poultry the life cycle stage that contributes most to the overall categories. On the other hand, FM and FO from Peruvian anchovy were the ingredients with a lower contribution to all impact categories, except for abiotic depletion category, for FM from Peruvian anchovy, and abiotic depletion, abiotic depletion (fossil fuels) and ozone layer depletion for FO from Peruvian anchovy. For these categories, soybean meal and oil had lower impacts, respectively. The ingredients were compared by classes (protein and lipid sources).ConclusionsA general conclusion is that soybean meal and oil and FM/FO from Peruvian anchovy appear to be very interesting options for aquafeeds from an LCA perspective. However, some limitations identified for this study, as, for instance, that it does not account for the environmental benefits associated with the use of the mentioned by-products, that would otherwise be considered wastes (i.e. by-products from the fish canning sector and poultry slaughter) shall be evaluated in future studies.