Stefan Frank

Climate change mitigation through livestock system transitions.

Significance The livestock sector contributes significantly to global warming through greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. At the same time, livestock is an invaluable source of nutrition and livelihood for millions of poor people. Therefore, climate mitigation policies involving livestock must be designed with extreme care. Here we demonstrate the large mitigation potential inherent in the heterogeneity of livestock production systems. We find that even within existing systems, autonomous transitions from extensive to more productive systems would decrease GHG emissions and improve food availability. Most effective climate policies involving livestock would be those targeting emissions from land-use change. To minimize the economic and social cost, policies should target emissions at their source—on the supply side—rather than on the demand side. Livestock are responsible for 12% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Sustainable intensification of livestock production systems might become a key climate mitigation technology. However, livestock production systems vary substantially, making the implementation of climate mitigation policies a formidable challenge. Here, we provide results from an economic model using a detailed and high-resolution representation of livestock production systems. We project that by 2030 autonomous transitions toward more efficient systems would decrease emissions by 736 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year (MtCO2e⋅y−1), mainly through avoided emissions from the conversion of 162 Mha of natural land. A moderate mitigation policy targeting emissions from both the agricultural and land-use change sectors with a carbon price of US

EU Energy, Transport and GHG Emissions: Trends to 2050, Reference Scenario 2013

10 per tCO2e could lead to an abatement of 3,223 MtCO2e⋅y−1. Livestock system transitions would contribute 21% of the total abatement, intra- and interregional relocation of livestock production another 40%, and all other mechanisms would add 39%. A comparable abatement of 3,068 MtCO2e⋅y−1 could be achieved also with a policy targeting only emissions from land-use change. Stringent climate policies might lead to reductions in food availability of up to 200 kcal per capita per day globally. We find that mitigation policies targeting emissions from land-use change are 5 to 10 times more efficient—measured in “total abatement calorie cost”—than policies targeting emissions from livestock only. Thus, fostering transitions toward more productive livestock production systems in combination with climate policies targeting the land-use change appears to be the most efficient lever to deliver desirable climate and food availability outcomes.

How effective are the sustainability criteria accompanying the European Union 2020 biofuel targets

This report is an update and extension of the previous trend scenarios for development of energy systems taking account of transport and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions developments. The purpose of this publication is to present the new European Union (EU) Reference scenario 2013. It focuses on energy, transport and climate dimensions of EU developments and the various interactions among policies, including specific sections on emission trends not related to energy. The Reference scenario was elaborated by a consortium led by the National Technical University of Athens (E3MLab) using the PRIMES model for energy and CO2 emission projections, the GAINS model for non-CO2 emission projections and the GLOBIOM-G4M models for LULUCF emission and removal projections. The scenarios are available for the EU and each of its 28 Member States simulating the energy balances and GHG emission trends for future years under current trends and policies as adopted in the Member States by spring 2012.

Assessing the land resource-food price nexus of the Sustainable Development Goals

The expansion of biofuel production can lead to an array of negative environmental impacts. Therefore, the European Union (EU) has recently imposed sustainability criteria on biofuel production in the Renewable Energy Directive (RED). In this article, we analyse the effectiveness of the sustainability criteria for climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation. We first use a global agriculture and forestry model to investigate environmental effects of the EU member states National Renewable Energy Action Plans (NREAPs) without sustainability criteria. We conclude that these targets would drive losses of 2.2 Mha of highly biodiverse areas and generate 95 Mt CO 2 eq of additional greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, in a second step, we demonstrate that the EU biofuel demand could be satisfied ‘sustainably’ according to RED despite its negative environmental effects. This is because the majority of global crop production is produced ‘sustainably’ in the sense of RED and can provide more than 10 times the total European biofuel demand in 2020 if reallocated from sectors without sustainability criteria. This finding points to a potential policy failure of applying sustainability regulation to a single sector in a single region. To be effective this policy needs to be more complete in targeting a wider scope of agricultural commodities and more comprehensive in its membership of countries.

How to spend a dwindling greenhouse gas budget

Researchers apply an economic model to trade-offs facing the UN’s ambitious Sustainable Development Goals agenda. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for a comprehensive new approach to development rooted in planetary boundaries, equity, and inclusivity. The wide scope of the SDGs will necessitate unprecedented integration of siloed policy portfolios to work at international, regional, and national levels toward multiple goals and mitigate the conflicts that arise from competing resource demands. In this analysis, we adopt a comprehensive modeling approach to understand how coherent policy combinations can manage trade-offs among environmental conservation initiatives and food prices. Our scenario results indicate that SDG strategies constructed around Sustainable Consumption and Production policies can minimize problem-shifting, which has long placed global development and conservation agendas at odds. We conclude that Sustainable Consumption and Production policies (goal 12) are most effective at minimizing trade-offs and argue for their centrality to the formulation of coherent SDG strategies. We also find that alternative socioeconomic futures—mainly, population and economic growth pathways—generate smaller impacts on the eventual achievement of land resource–related SDGs than do resource-use and management policies. We expect that this and future systems analyses will allow policy-makers to negotiate trade-offs and exploit synergies as they assemble sustainable development strategies equal in scope to the ambition of the SDGs.

Global food markets, trade and the cost of climate change adaptation

The Paris Agreement is based on emission scenarios that move from a sluggish phase-out of fossil fuels to large-scale late-century negative emissions. Alternative pathways of early deployment of negative emission technologies need to be considered to ensure that climate targets are reached safely and sustainably.

Structural change as a key component for agricultural non-CO2 mitigation efforts

Achieving food security in the face of climate change is a major challenge for humanity in the 21st century but comprehensive analyses of climate change impacts, including global market feedbacks are still lacking. In the context of uneven impacts of climate change across regions interconnected through trade, climate change impact and adaptation policies in one region need to be assessed in a global framework. Focusing on four Eastern Asian countries and using a global integrated modeling framework we show that i) once imports are considered, the overall climate change impact on the amount of food available could be of opposite sign to the direct domestic impacts and ii) production and trade adjustments following price signals could reduce the spread of climate change impacts on food availability. We then investigated how pressure on the food system in Eastern Asia could be mitigated by a consumer support policy. We found that the costs of adaptation policies to 2050 varied greatly across climate projections. The costs of consumer support policies would also be lower if only implemented in one region but market price leakage could exacerbate pressure on food systems in other regions. We conclude that climate adaptation should no longer be viewed only as a geographically isolated local problem.

Forest Resource Projection Tools at the European Level

Agriculture is the single largest source of anthropogenic non-carbon dioxide (non-CO2) emissions. Reaching the climate target of the Paris Agreement will require significant emission reductions across sectors by 2030 and continued efforts thereafter. Here we show that the economic potential of non-CO2 emissions reductions from agriculture is up to four times as high as previously estimated. In fact, we find that agriculture could achieve already at a carbon price of 25 

Global bioenergy scenarios - Future forest development, land-use implications, and trade-offs

/tCO2eq non-CO2 reductions of around 1 GtCO2eq/year by 2030 mainly through the adoption of technical and structural mitigation options. At 100 

The land use change impact of biofuels consumed in the EU: Quantification of area and greenhouse gas impacts

/tCO2eq agriculture could even provide non-CO2 reductions of 2.6 GtCO2eq/year in 2050 including demand side efforts. Immediate action to favor the widespread adoption of technical options in developed countries together with productivity increases through structural changes in developing countries is needed to move agriculture on track with a 2 °C climate stabilization pathway.To achieve the climate target of the Paris Agreement substantial emission reductions will be required across economic sectors. Here the authors show that agriculture can make a significant contribution to non-CO2 mitigation efforts through structural change in the livestock sector and the deployment of technical options.