Balancing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals in the land-use sector by 2035 is one of the key milestones presented in the European Green Deal, but achieving climate neutrality will require further emission cuts in the agricultural sector. However, when it comes to setting ambitious mitigation targets for the sector, (national) policymakers are often reluctant to make strong commitments.
One reason could be the close interactions of agriculture with other policy objectives related to climate change mitigation, such as sustained food production, nutrition security, or biodiversity. Even though agricultural policies are frequently implemented using subsidies, such as in the European Union Common Agriculture Policy, policymakers strive to find a balance that ensures progress on these goals while at the same time not overburdening farmers.
Another fear is that ambitious mitigation efforts could cause economic losses for EU farmers whose income already relies heavily on subsidies. Reducing emissions could for instance lead to increased production costs and a consequent deterioration in the cost-competitiveness of EU farmers when comparing domestic production with imports. For example, the adoption of mitigation practices such as precision farming or anaerobic digesters increase costs, and the reduction in fertilizer application as suggested in the Farm to Fork Strategy may also directly impact crop yields and subsequently revenues.
In our study recently published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, we investigated the impacts of an ambitious EU agricultural mitigation policy on agricultural markets, farmers, and GHG emissions applying an ensemble of agricultural sector models. We investigated two alternative scenarios.
The first scenario represents a situation where only the EU adopts stringent mitigation efforts for agriculture compatible with the 1.5°C target at global scale, while the second imagines a world where other world regions also take action.
Figure from Frank et al. (2021): Average impact across models of different levels of ROW mitigation ambition on EU agricultural production, prices and production value corrected for carbon tax payments in 2050. RUM—ruminant beef, DRY—milk, NRM—non-ruminant meatand eggs, CGR—coarse grains, WHT—wheat, and OSD—oilseeds.
We found that EU beef producers are strongly affected if only the EU pursues stringent agricultural emission reduction efforts. For example, cutting EU agricultural non-CO2 emissions by close to 40% (155 MtCO2eq/yr) in 2050 could result in a 22% decline in EU beef production. Despite emission leakage effects through reallocation of production outside the EU, a unilateral mitigation policy delivers climate benefits and yields net emission savings at global scale of around 90 MtCO2eq/yr.
Once regions outside Europe start to pursue mitigation efforts that are compatible with those in the EU, economic impacts on EU farmers are distributed more equally across world regions as farmers outside the EU are included in the mitigation policy and start contributing. Since EU farmers rank among the most GHG efficient producers at global scale, with increasing mitigation efforts in other world regions, EU farmers don’t lose their competitiveness, even if the EU pursues 1.5°C compatible efforts.
Unlike in the unilateral EU policy, EU farmers could even start to benefit from a globally coordinated mitigation policy beyond a certain point. For example, if regions outside the EU were to pursue at least half the effort implemented in the EU and were required to reach the 1.5°C target globally, the economic value of production of EU beef and non-ruminant producers could exceed baseline scenario projections without any mitigation efforts in agriculture.
Similar effects are observed for other world regions with GHG-efficient agricultural production systems, while GHG intensive producers are projected to lose market shares. Given differences in GHG mitigation efficiencies and economic prospects across world regions, accompanying distributional policies such as climate finance policies could help to alleviate the risk of mitigation induced food security or poverty issues. Our study highlights these economic challenges and opportunities for farmers related to the required transition of the global food system to achieve the 1.5°C target.
Further info:
Frank, S., Havlik, P, Tabeau, A., Witzke, P., Boere, E., Bogonos, M., Deppermann, A., van Dijk, M., et al. (2021). How much multilateralism do we need? Effectiveness of unilateral agricultural mitigation efforts in the global context. Environmental Research Letters 16 (10) e104038. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac2967 [pure.iiasa.ac.at/17492]
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Since the start of the industrial revolution, the Earth’s population has grown exponentially, and it is still growing every year. In addition to heavy population growth, human advances in medicine, science, and technology have allowed people to live longer lives as well. As more countries industrialize, the demand for land extensive commodities like meat and dairy have also increased. Deforestation has risen worldwide making way for cattle and other livestock grazing, and more of the food we grow is being dedicated towards livestock rather than human consumption.
With problems like unsustainable land use, climate change, and suburban sprawls in places like the United States and Australia decreasing available arable lands, this poses the question: is there any way we can feed a growing population without further damaging ecosystems and contributing to climate change? In addition to achieving this goal, we simultaneously want to promote equitable and just societies. 2021 YSSP participant Scott Spillias believes he might have a solution: seaweed.
Spillias has a background in marine biology and sailing. After years of sailing the world, he could see the alarming state of our oceans. Wanting to be part of the solution, he moved to Australia to study oceanic food systems, environmental economics, and environmental decision making at the University of Queensland.
“We live on an ocean planet, yet almost all of the food we grow comes from land. When it comes to the sea, we are essentially just unsustainably hunting and gathering from our oceans. I want to know what it would look like if instead, we tried to farm them,” Spillias explains.
Spillias says that seaweed as an agricultural product is already useful with its range of uses including food, livestock feed, fuel, fertilizer, and multiple products in the form of hydrocolloids. Hydrocolloids, more commonly known as “gums”, are extracted from plants like seaweeds and algae; they are used as setting and thickening agents in a variety of products including foods and pharmaceuticals, often increasing shelf life and quality.
A University of California, Davis study found that incorporating seaweed in cattle feed could reduce methane emissions from beef cattle by as much as 82%. Moreover, seaweed’s broad range of uses can hypothetically decrease land usage in favor of sea usage. Seaweeds also serve many ecological roles such as filtering ocean waters, serving as nurseries for small fish and crustaceans, and protecting sea floors.
There are two types of seaweed farming in use today. In parts of China, South Korea, and Japan there is floating offshore seaweed production, where the seaweed is grown and harvested while floating in deep waters. Another form of seaweed farming seen in Indonesia, Tanzania, and the Philippines involves a different approach, where the seaweed is grown and farmed closer to the coast in shallower waters, or the intertidal zone. Both provide ecosystem services, jobs, and food for local populations.
“We are going to assume that the seaweeds we are growing will be for food, feed, and fuel. We are also taking certain constraints into consideration, such as the inability to place seaweed farms in high traffic shipping areas or marine protected zones. Getting rough estimates of seaweed production can then give us an idea of land commodities we can replace, for instance, corn used for biofuel,” he says.
Spillias hopes that this research can provide results that can influence policy.
“Locally, seaweed farming will either be beneficial or destructive – it depends on where you put it and how you do it. Zooming out and understanding how these tradeoffs relate to terrestrial production will give policymakers a clearer idea of whether to promote or restrict the practice.”
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
By Shorouk Elkobros, 2020 IIASA Science Communication Fellow
Being mindful of biodiversity loss and environmental impact can disrupt the beef industry globally, here’s how.
In his new polemical Netflix documentary, A life on our planet, Sir David Attenborough argues that, “We live on a finely tuned life support machine, one that relies on its biodiversity to run smoothly.”
The decline in biodiversity challenges the world’s capacity to produce food for a growing population. That is ironic when global food production itself is a contributing factor to biodiversity loss, especially beef production.
What’s wrong with the beef industry?
Here are a couple of the current challenges facing the beef industry: Cows are major culprits in climate change because they emit methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Beef production is the number one driver of deforestation and habitat loss in tropical forests. Grazing cattle also require a large amount of grass that requires using harsh nitrogen fertilizers. Hence, the beef production industry contributes heavily to biodiversity loss, which has dire consequences for the planet.
There is no silver bullet to solve the challenges beef production poses to the environment. Research is going above and beyond to find diverse and integrated solutions that can go hand in hand to combat this challenge. Whether through ways to reduce methane emissions, such as creating an anti-burp vaccine for cows, designing lab-grown meat, or shifting diets to plant-based alternatives.
Katie Lee, an alumna of the 2020 IIASA Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) and PhD student at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, is part of a broader project that focuses on redistributing where we produce beef to minimize its impact on greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity, as well as on the cost of production.
“I am particularly interested in ways to enhance the types of beef production systems. With the challenges of its water use, greenhouse gas emissions, and the large areas of land it requires compared to any other food source, any small changes we propose can have a big impact,” she explains.
For Lee, solutions to global food security are crucial, and looking at the status of production systems is both a need and a must. The world population is expected to reach 9.7 billion people by 2050. So, when thinking about ways to feed 10 Billion people by 2050, it becomes clear that it is not enough to simply look at beef alternatives without enhancing its current demand and supply chains. Lee thinks it is more efficient to pragmatically alter and improve the environmental impact of beef production than to convince people to stop eating beef.
It is understood that reducing beef consumption has health benefits. However, with a growing interest in alternative meat options, the question remains of which markets this appeals to, and how environmentally friendly and energy- and water intensive these alternatives are.
“While demand reduction on meat is important, sometimes it is not feasible in countries that do not have economic security or are still growing in terms of affluence, which leads to an increase in beef consumption. That is why we need to look at the producer side and the consumer side, as well as everything in between to have the biggest impact. I was particularly interested to conduct this research in cooperation with IIASA, mainly because the institute has a good history of looking at the impact of beef, particularly in terms of greenhouse gas emissions,” says Lee.
A win-win all-round solution
Using the IIASA Global Biosphere Management Model (GLOBIOM), Lee is assessing the impact on greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity when shifting both the production and demand of beef. Preliminary results from her ongoing study show a reduction in impact on biodiversity and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as a reduction of the producer price when switching away from extensive grazing systems ̶ a win-win situation all-round.
“Few studies explicitly address biodiversity loss compared to investigating ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I want to show stakeholders that beef production can be more efficient in terms of reducing its impact on greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity. I am hopeful that this study can help beef producers to be mindful of this when making choices. That will be a win for the environment if it goes together with a proactive reduction of meat consumption,” concludes Lee.
Similar to Lee’s study and using a set of large-scale economic models including GLOBIOM, the IIASA AnimalChange research project aims to assess the global scale adaptation and mitigation options of the livestock sector to ensure a sustainable livestock production sector by 2050.
Limiting global warming and protecting biodiversity should be a priority when designing food systems able to feed an increasing population. As a food producer, whether you raise cattle or design cell cultured meat, it is important to be conscious about livestock hoof prints on biodiversity. As a food consumer, it is necessary to be mindful of having a healthy and sustainable diet that does not put the planet in jeopardy. Sustainable beef production might not be the panacea to future biodiversity loss or food scarcity, yet it can offer a significant change.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
By Maryna Strokal, Department of Environmental Sciences, Water Systems and Global Change, Wageningen University and Research, The Netherlands
Maryna Strokal discusses a new integrated approach to finding cost-effective solutions for nutrient pollution and coastal eutrophication developed with IIASA colleagues.
Have you ever wondered why the water in some rivers appear to be green? The green tinge you see is due to eutrophication, which means that too many nutrients – specifically nitrogen and phosphorus – are present in the water. This happens because rivers receive these nutrients from various land-based activities like run-off from agricultural fields and sewage effluents from cities. Rivers in turn export many of these nutrients to coastal waters, where it serves as food for algae. Too many nutrients, however, cause the algae and their blooms to grow more than normal. Because algae consumes a lot of oxygen, this lowers the available oxygen supply in the water, killing off fish and other marine life. Some algae can also be toxic to people when they eat seafood that have been exposed to, or fed on it. Polluted river water on the other hand, is unfit for direct use as drinking water, or for cooking, showering, or any of our other daily needs. Before we can use this water, it needs to be treated, which of course costs money.
To better understand and address these issues, I worked with colleagues from IIASA, Wageningen University, and China to develop an integrated approach to identify cost-effective solutions (read cheapest) to reduce river pollution and thus coastal eutrophication. Our integrated approach takes into account human activities on land, land use, the economy, the climate, and hydrology. We implemented the new approach for the Yangtze Basin in China.
The Yangtze is the third longest river in the world and exports nutrients from ten sub-basins to the East China Sea, where the coast often experiences severe eutrophication problems that may increase in the coming years. The Chinese government has called for effective actions to ensure clean water for both people and nature.
In our paper on this work, which was recently published in the journal Resources, Conservation, and Recycling, my colleagues and I conclude that reducing more than 80% of nutrient pollution in the Yangtze will cost US$ 1–3 billion in 2050. This cost might seem high, but it is actually far below 10% of the income level in the Yangtze basin. We also identified an opportunity in the negative or zero cost range, which would result in a below 80% reduction in nutrient export by the Yangtze. This negative or zero cost alternative involves options to recycle manure on land and reduce the use of chemical fertilizers (Figure 1). More recycling means that farmers will buy less chemical fertilizers and potential savings can then compensate for the expenses related to recycling the manure. We also illustrated the costs that would be involved for ten sub-basins to reduce their nutrient export to coastal waters.
Figure 1. Summarized illustration of eutrophication causes and cost-effective solutions for reducing nutrient export by Yangtze and thus coastal eutrophication in the East China Sea in 2050.
Recycling manure on cropland is an important and cost-effective solution for agriculture in the sub-basins of the Yangtze River (Figure 1). Manure is rich in the nutrients that crops need, and opting for this alternative instead of chemical fertilizers avoids loss of nutrients to rivers, and thus ultimately to coastal waters. Current practices are however still far from ideal, with manure – and especially liquid manure – often being discharged into water because crop and livestock farms are far away from each other, which makes it practically and economically difficult to transport manure to where it is needed. Another reason is the historical practice of farmers using chemical fertilizers on their crops – it is simply how they are used to doing things. Unfortunately, the amounts of fertilizers that farmers apply are often far above what crops actually need, thus leading to river pollution.
The Chinese government are investing in combining crop and livestock production, in other words, they are creating an agricultural sector where crops are used to feed animals and manure from the animals is in turn used to fertilize crops. Chinese scientists are working with farmers to implement these solutions.
In our paper, we showed that these solutions are not only sustainable, but also cost-effective in terms of avoiding coastal eutrophication. We invite you to read our paper for more details.
References
Strokal M, Kahil T, Wada Y, Albiac J, Bai Z, Ermolieva T, Langan S, Ma L, et al. (2020). Cost-effective management of coastal eutrophication: A case study for the Yangtze River basin. Resources, Conservation and Recycling 154: e104635. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2019.104635.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
By Adriana Gómez-Sanabria, researcher in the IIASA Air Quality and Greenhouse Gases Program
Adriana Gómez-Sanabriadiscusses the results of a new study that looked into the impacts of implementing various technologies to treat wastewater from the fish processing industry in Indonesia.
To reduce water pollution and climate risks, the world needs to go beyond signing agreements and start acting. Translating agreements and policies into action is however always much more difficult than it might seem, because it requires all players involved to participate. A complete integration strategy across all sectors is needed. One of the advantages of integrating all sectors is that it would be possible to meet different objectives, for example, climate and water protection goals in this case, with the same strategy.
I was involved in a study that assessed the impacts of implementing various technologies to treat wastewater from the fish processing industry in Indonesia when involving different levels of governance. This study is part of the strategies that the government of Indonesia is evaluating to meet the greenhouse gas mitigation goals pledged in its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), as well as to reduce water pollution. Although Indonesia has severe national wastewater regulations, especially in the fish processing industry, these are not being strictly implemented due to lack of expertise, wastewater infrastructure, budgetary availability, and lack of stakeholder engagement. The objective of the study was to evaluate which technology would be the most appropriate and what levels of governance would need to be involved to simultaneously meet national climate and water quality targets in the country.
Seven different wastewater treatment technologies and governance levels were included in the analysis. The combinations included were: 1) Untreated/anaerobic lagoons – where untreated means wastewater is discharged without any treatment and anaerobic lagoons are ponds filled with wastewater that undergo anaerobic processes – combined with the current level of governance. 2) Aeration lagoons – which are wastewater treatment systems consisting of a pond with artificial aeration to promote the oxidation of wastewaters, plus activated sludge focused solely on water quality targets with no coordination between water and climate institutions. 3) Swimbed, which is an aerobic aeration tank focusing mainly on climate targets assuming no coordination between institutions. 4) Upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) technology, which is an anaerobic reactor with gas recovery and use followed by Swimbed, and 5) UASB with gas recovery and use followed by activated sludge, which is an aerobic treatment that uses microorganisms forming particles that clump together. Both, 4 and 5 assume vertical and horizontal coordination between water and climate institutions at national, regional, and local level. It is important to notice that the main difference between 4 and 5 is the technology used in the second step. Two additional combinations, 6 and 7, are also proposed including the same technological combinations of 4 and 5, but these include increasing the level of governance to a multi-actor coordination level. The multi-actor level includes coordination at all institutional levels but also involves academia, research institutes, international support, and other stakeholders.
Our results indicate that if the current situation continues, there would be an increase of greenhouse gases and water pollution between 2015 and 2030, driven by the growth in fish industry production volumes. Interestingly, the study also shows that focusing only on strengthening capacities to enforce national water policies would result in greenhouse gas emissions five times higher in 2030 than if the current situation continues, due to the increased electricity consumption and sludge production from the wastewater treatment process. The benefit of this strategy would be positive for the reduction of water pollution, but negative for climate change mitigation. From our analyses of combinations 2 and 3 we learned that technology can be very efficient for one purpose but detrimental for others. If different institutions are, for example, responsible for water quality and climate change mitigation, communication between the institutions is crucial to avoid trade-offs between environmental objectives.
Furthermore, when analyzing different cooperation strategies together with a combination of diverse sets of technologies, we found that not all combinations work appropriately. For instance, improving interaction just within and between institutions does not guarantee proper selection and application of technologies. In this case, the adoption of the technology is not fast enough to meet the targets proposed in 2030, thus resulting in policy implementation failures. Our analyses of combinations 4 and 5 showed that interaction within and between national, regional, and local institutions alone is not enough to prevent policy failure.
Finally, a multi-actor cooperation strategy that includes cooperation across sectors, administrative levels, international support, and stakeholders, seems to be the right approach to ensure selection of the most appropriate technologies and achieve policy success. We identified that with this approach, it would be possible to reduce water pollution and simultaneously decrease greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity required for wastewater treatment. Analyzing combinations 6 and 7 revealed that multi-actor governance allows to simultaneously meet climate and water objectives and a high chance to prevent policy failure.
In the end, analyses such as the one shown here, highlight the importance of integrating and creating synergies across sectors, administrative levels, stakeholders, and international institutions to ensure an effective implementation of policies that provide incentives to make careful choices regarding multi-objective treatment technologies.
Reference:
Gómez-Sanabria A, Zusman E, Höglund-Isaksson L, Klimont Z, Lee S-Y, Akahoshi K, Farzaneh H, & Chairunnisa (2019). Sustainable wastewater management in Indonesia’s fish processing industry: bringing governance into scenario analysis. Journal of Environmental Management (Submitted).
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
By Barbara Willaarts, researcher with the IIASA Water Program
On World Water Day 2019, IIASA researcher Barbara Willaarts tells us more about how our dietary choices can contribute towards reaching the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 6: Water for all by 2030.
The theme chosen for World Water Day 2019 is “Leaving no one behind”. As the UN emphasizes, this year is very much about reminding ourselves that there are still considerable efforts required to provide clean water, sanitation, and hygiene for all people across the globe.
While there is no question about the fact that we should push our governments and decision makers to pursue the fundamental human right of access to clean water, bringing forward the sustainable development water agenda – specifically Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 : Water for all by 2030 – requires that action is taken on multiple fronts. Securing access and sanitation, is a top priority, but how we manage the water we have access to, is also fundamental.
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The first key message here is that a lot of the actions that are required to overcome many of the global water challenges like water scarcity, pollution, and ecosystem degradation, actually do not require expensive government interventions. Many rely on us, on the choices that we make as citizens and consumers in our day-to-day activities. What we wear, how we eat, or what we buy and where we buy it, are daily personal decisions, and these can make a huge difference when it comes to achieving the sustainable development agenda and in particular, SDG6.
In the past years I have conducted various research projects looking into the footprints of our lifestyles, particularly in western societies. The aim behind these investigations was not only to quantify impacts to raise awareness, but also to use this information to define benchmarks for sustainable consumption.
Being Dutch, it is not strange that I have developed my professional career in the water sector, and living in Spain (the most arid country in the EU) for many years has only deepened my interest in looking into drivers of and solutions to global water scarcity. Anyone working in this field will quickly agree that exploring solutions to water scarcity problems very often implies looking at solutions related to the way we produce and consume agricultural products.
There is a bunch of interesting literature out there assessing solutions to increase the efficiency of agricultural production systems and pathways to reduce its environmental footprint. Approaching the food problem from a consumption perspective, however, is an arena that researchers only recently started to explore. This is promising because, firstly, the benefits of improving consumption patterns might outweigh those achieved through efficiency gains. Secondly, this science often conveys messages that are easy to grasp and implement, for example, eat meat only once a week, buy local, and eat five a day of vegetables and fruits. Lastly, it also empowers citizens as the main actors of the social change that is required to meet the sustainability agenda.
With that said, I would like to reflect on a recent study led by colleagues from the Polytechnic University of Madrid and the Food and Agricultural Organization, that I was involved in. The research in question is about the water and nutritional implications of shifting diets, and we used Spain as a case study. The choice of the case study was driven by the fact that Spain, like other Mediterranean countries, is often recognized and valued for its fresh, locally grown, and healthy diets. The reality is however that, while it has been so for many years, things across the Mediterranean, and particularly in Spain, have changed substantially after the 70s as a result of a number of drivers including increasing migration to cities, incorporation of more women into the labor force, work-life imbalance, and food trade openness.
According to the results of our study, the dietary shift in Spain is such that current diets resemble an inverted food pyramid, with households eating 15% more meat, beverages, and sugar products and 37% less fruits and vegetables on a daily basis than what is actually recommended by the Mediterranean dietary guidelines. The effect of this shift is that today, Spain ranks fifth in the EU of countries with the highest prevalence of obesity and overweight.
These dietary shifts have all sorts of nutritional and environmental implications. From a nutritional perspective, current diets contain 17% more kilocalories (Kcal) – meaning units of energy – than the recommended intake, as well as a 36% higher content of macro-nutrients like fats and proteins. On the other extreme, the intake of essential micro-nutrients like vitamins and minerals has decreased sharply by 40%.
From a water perspective, the observed dietary shifts have increased the water footprint of food consumption by 34%, which is equivalent to seven times the daily per capita consumption of domestic water. An interesting finding here is that current dietary patterns are not just more water intense, but also more international, since over 40% of water “eaten” is from imported food products. This basically means that the Spanish food basket is no longer local but is increasingly being filled with foreign land, biodiversity, and water resources.
Spain is not a unique case and it is very likely that similar trends are occurring across other European and developed countries. This clearly evidences that what we eat matters a lot – to our health and to our environment. Most importantly, you and I have the capacity to make the difference. Eat healthy, eat sustainably, and don’t leave yourself behind!
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
These dietary shifts have all sorts of nutritional and environmental implications. From a nutritional perspective, current diets contain 17% more kilocalories (Kcal) – meaning units of energy – than the recommended intake, as well as a 36% higher content of macro-nutrients like fats and proteins. On the other extreme, the intake of essential micro-nutrients like vitamins and minerals has decreased sharply by 40%.
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