Agency shifts in agricultural land governance and their implications for land degradation neutrality

Given current land degradation trends, Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN, SDG Target 15.3) by 2030 could be difficult to attain. Solutions to avoid, reduce, and reverse land degradation are not being implemented at sufficiently large scales, pointing to land governance as the main obstacle. In this paper, we review dynamics in agricultural land governance, and the potential this may have to enable land degradation or provide solutions towards LDN. The literature reveals agency shifts are taking place, where value chain actors are given increasing decision-making power in land governance. These agency shifts are manifested in two interrelated trends: First, through agricultural value chain coordination, such as contract farming, value chain actors increasingly influence land management decisions. Second, international large-scale land acquisitions and domestic larger-scale farms, both instances of intensified direct involvement of value chain with land management, are overtaking significant areas of land. These new arrangements are associated with agricultural expansion, and are additionally associated with unsustainable land management due to absent landowners, short-term interests, and high-intensity agriculture. However, we also find that value chain actors have both the tools and business cases to catalyze LDN solutions. We discuss how governments and other LDN brokers can motivate or push private actors to deploy private governance measures to avoid, reduce, and reverse land degradation. Successful implementation of LDN requires refocusing efforts to enable and, where necessary, constrain all actors with agency over land management, including value chain actors.     

Demand for biodiversity protection and carbon storage as drivers of global land change scenarios

Many global land change scenarios are driven by demand for food, feed, fiber, and fuel. However, novel demands for other ecosystem services give rise to nexus issues and can lead to different land system changes. In this paper we explore the effects of including multiple different demands in land change scenarios. Our reference scenario is driven by demands for crop production, ruminant livestock production, and provisioning of built-up area. We then compare two alternative scenarios with additional demands for terrestrial carbon storage and biodiversity protection, respectively. These scenarios represent possible implementations of globally agreed policy targets. The simulated land system change scenarios are compared in terms of changes in cropland intensity and area, as well as tree and grassland area changes. We find that the carbon and biodiversity scenarios generally result in greater intensification and less expansion of cropland, with the biodiversity scenario showing a stronger intensification effect. However, the impact of setting the targets impacts different world regions in different ways. Overall, both scenarios result in a larger tree area compared to the reference scenario, while the carbon scenario also yields more grassland area. The land systems simulated while accounting for these additional demand types show strong patterns of specialization and spatial segregation in the provisioning of goods and services in different world regions. Our results indicate the relevance of including demands for multiple different goods and services in global land change assessments.     

Transforming agricultural land use through marginal gains in the food system

There is an increasing need for transformational changes in the global food system to deliver healthy nutritional outcomes for a growing population while simultaneously ensuring environmental sustainability. However, such changes are subject to political and public constraints that usually allow only gradual, incremental changes to occur. Drawing inspiration from the British cycling team’s concept of marginal gains, we show how transformation might be reconciled with incremental changes. We demonstrate that a set of marginal food system changes acting to increase production efficiency, to reduce losses or to adjust diets could collectively reduce the agricultural land required globally for food production by 21%, or over a third given higher adoption rates. The results show that while all categories of action are important, changes in consumer choices in Europe, North America and Oceania and in the supply-chain in Africa and West and Central Asia have the greatest potential to reduce the land footprint of the food system.     

Supply of carbon sequestration and biodiversity services from Australia's agricultural land under global change

Global agroecosystems can contribute to both climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation, and market mechanisms provide a highly prospective means of achieving these outcomes. However, the ability of markets to motivate the supply of carbon sequestration and biodiversity services from agricultural land is uncertain, especially given the future changes in environmental, economic, and social drivers. We quantified the potential supply of these services from the intensive agricultural land of Australia from 2013 to 2050 under four global outlooks in response to a carbon price and biodiversity payment scheme. Each global outlook specified emissions pathways, climate, food demand, energy price, and carbon price modeled using the Global Integrated Assessment Model (GIAM). Using a simplified version of the Land Use Trade-Offs (LUTO) model, economic returns to agriculture, carbon plantings, and environmental plantings were calculated each year. The supply of carbon sequestration and biodiversity services was then quantified given potential land use change under each global outlook, and the sensitivity of the results to key parameters was assessed. We found that carbon supply curves were similar across global outlooks. Sharp increases in carbon sequestration supply occurred at carbon prices exceeding 50 $ tCO₂⁻¹ in 2015 and exceeding 65 $ tCO₂⁻¹ in 2050. Based on GIAM-modeled carbon prices, little carbon sequestration was expected at 2015 under any global outlook. However, at 2050 expected carbon supply under each outlook differed markedly, ranging from 0 to 189 MtCO₂ yr⁻¹. Biodiversity services of 3.32% of the maximum may be achieved in 2050 for a 1 $B investment under median scenario settings. We conclude that a carbon market can motivate supply of substantial carbon sequestration but only modest amounts of biodiversity services from agricultural land. A complementary biodiversity payment can synergistically increase the supply of biodiversity services but will not provide much additional carbon sequestration. The results were sensitive to global drivers, especially the carbon price, and the domestic drivers of adoption hurdle rate and agricultural productivity. The results can inform the design of an effective national policy and institutional portfolio addressing the dual objectives of climate change and biodiversity conservation that is robust to future uncertainty in both national and global drivers.     

When enough should be enough: Improving the use of current agricultural lands could meet production demands and spare natural habitats in Brazil

Providing food and other products to a growing human population while safeguarding natural ecosystems and the provision of their services is a significant scientific, social and political challenge. With food demand likely to double over the next four decades, anthropization is already driving climate change and is the principal force behind species extinction, among other environmental impacts. The sustainable intensification of production on current agricultural lands has been suggested as a key solution to the competition for land between agriculture and natural ecosystems. However, few investigations have shown the extent to which these lands can meet projected demands while considering biophysical constraints. Here we investigate the improved use of existing agricultural lands and present insights into avoiding future competition for land. We focus on Brazil, a country projected to experience the largest increase in agricultural production over the next four decades and the richest nation in terrestrial carbon and biodiversity. Using various models and climatic datasets, we produced the first estimate of the carrying capacity of Brazil's 115 million hectares of cultivated pasturelands. We then investigated if the improved use of cultivated pasturelands would free enough land for the expansion of meat, crops, wood and biofuel, respecting biophysical constraints (i.e., terrain, climate) and including climate change impacts. We found that the current productivity of Brazilian cultivated pasturelands is 32–34% of its potential and that increasing productivity to 49–52% of the potential would suffice to meet demands for meat, crops, wood products and biofuels until at least 2040, without further conversion of natural ecosystems. As a result up to 14.3 Gt CO₂ Eq could be mitigated. The fact that the country poised to undergo the largest expansion of agricultural production over the coming decades can do so without further conversion of natural habitats provokes the question whether the same can be true in other regional contexts and, ultimately, at the global scale.     

Sustainable agricultural intensification or Jevons paradox? The role of public governance in tropical South America

The process of global deforestation calls for urgent attention, particularly in South America where deforestation rates have failed to decline over the past 20 years. The main direct cause of deforestation is land conversion to agriculture. We combine data from the FAO and the World Bank for six tropical Southern American countries over the period 1970–2006, estimate a panel data model accounting for various determinants of agricultural land expansion and derive elasticities to quantify the effect of the different independent variables. We investigate whether agricultural intensification, in conjunction with governance factors, has been promoting agricultural expansion, leading to a “Jevons paradox”. The paradox occurs if an increase in the productivity of one factor (here agricultural land) leads to its increased, rather than decreased, utilization. We find that for high values of our governance indicators a Jevons paradox exists even for moderate levels of agricultural productivity, leading to an overall expansion of agricultural area. Agricultural expansion is also positively related to the level of service on external debt and population growth, while its association with agricultural exports is only moderate. Finally, we find no evidence of an environmental Kuznets curve, as agricultural area is ultimately positively correlated to per-capita income levels.     

Estimating the global potential of water harvesting from successful case studies

Water harvesting has been widely applied in different social-ecological contexts, proving to be a valuable approach to sustainable intensification of agriculture. Global estimates of the potential of water harvesting are generally based on purely biophysical assessments and mostly neglect the socioeconomic dimension of agriculture. This neglect becomes a critical factor for the feasibility and effectiveness of policy and funding efforts to mainstream this practice. This study uses archetype analysis to systematically identify social-ecological regions worldwide based on >160 successful cases of local water harvesting implementation. We delineate six archetypal regions which capture the specific social-ecological conditions of the case studies. The archetypes cover 19% of current global croplands with hotspots in large portions of East Africa and Southeast Asia. We estimate that the adoption of water harvesting in these cropland areas can increase crop production up to 60–100% in Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania and India. The results of this study can complement conventional biophysical analysis on the potential of these practices and guide policy development at global and regional scales. The methodological approach can be also replicated at finer scales to guide the improvement of rainfed agricultural.     

2005年气象灾害对辽宁农业生产影响评估

利用2005年气象数据和卫星遥感数据,对2005年农业气候资源进行了分析,同时评估了2005年气象灾害对辽宁农业生产的影响。结果表明:2005年辽宁气象灾害种类多、影响范围广,整体灾害损失程度较2004年严重,给工农业生产及人民生活造成了严重损失;全省粮食平均单产比2004年减产了5%,其中玉米单产比2004年减产12%,水稻减产1%。由于年初预报准确,且采取了有利的措施,因此,2005年粮食平均单产仍然比历年(1991～2004年)增产了6%。     

Spatially complex land change: The Indirect effect of Brazil's agricultural sector on land use in Amazonia

Soybean farming has brought economic development to parts of South America, as well as environmental hopes and concerns. A substantial hope resides in the decoupling of Brazil's agricultural sector from deforestation in the Amazon region, in which case expansive agriculture need not imply forest degradation. However, concerns have also been voiced about the potential indirect effects of agriculture. This article addresses these indirect effects for the case of the Brazilian Amazon since 2002. Our work finds that as much as thirty-two percent of deforestation, or the loss of more than 30,000 km² of Amazon forest, is attributable, indirectly, to Brazil's soybean sector. However, we also observe that the magnitude of the indirect impact of the agriculture sector on forest loss in the Amazon has declined markedly since 2006. We also find a shift in the underlying causes of indirect land use change in the Amazon, and suggest that land appreciation in agricultural regions has supplanted farm expansions as a source of indirect land use change. Our results are broadly congruent with recent work recognizing the success of policy changes in mitigating the impact of soybean expansion on forest loss in the Amazon. However, they also caution that the soybean sector may continue to incentivize land clearings through its impact on regional land markets.     

共享社会经济路径在土地利用、能源与碳排放研究的应用

情景是气候变化研究的重要工具。为了科学支撑气候变化科学评估和研究,2010年政府间气候变化专门委员会(IPCC)提出了共享社会经济路径(Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, SSPs)。作为从社会经济变化视角构建的气候情景,SSPs促进了气候变化科学基础、影响、脆弱性、风险、适应和减缓等学科的综合研究。本文介绍了SSPs情景研发与应用过程;阐述了全球和中国的人口经济、土地利用、能源和碳排放的模拟和预估主要成果;探讨了全球和中国碳排放路径及其与“双碳”目标的关系;并展望了SSPs应用前景。     

The effects of land surface process perturbations in a global ensemble forecast system

Atmospheric variability is driven not only by internal dynamics, but also by external forcing, such as soil states, SST, snow, sea-ice cover, and so on. To investigate the forecast uncertainties and effects of land surface processes on numerical weather prediction, we added modules to perturb soil moisture and soil temperature into NCEP’s Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS), and compared the results of a set of experiments involving different configurations of land surface and atmospheric perturbation. It was found that uncertainties in different soil layers varied due to the multiple timescales of interactions between land surface and atmospheric processes. Perturbations of the soil moisture and soil temperature at the land surface changed sensible and latent heat flux obviously, as compared to the less or indirect land surface perturbation experiment from the day-to-day forecasts. Soil state perturbations led to greater variation in surface heat fluxes that transferred to the upper troposphere, thus reflecting interactions and the response to atmospheric external forcing. Various verification scores were calculated in this study. The results indicated that taking the uncertainties of land surface processes into account in GEFS could contribute a slight improvement in forecast skill in terms of resolution and reliability, a noticeable reduction in forecast error, as well as an increase in ensemble spread in an under-dispersive system. This paper provides a preliminary evaluation of the effects of land surface processes on predictability. Further research using more complex and suitable methods is needed to fully explore our understanding in this area.     

The vulnerabilities of agricultural land and food production to future water scarcity

Rapidly increasing populations coupled with increased food demand requires either an expansion of agricultural land or sufficient production gains from current resources. However, in a changing world, reduced water availability might undermine improvements in crop and grass productivity and may disproportionately affect different parts of the world. Using multi-model studies, the potential trends, risks and uncertainties to land use and land availability that may arise from reductions in water availability are examined here. In addition, the impacts of different policy interventions on pressures from emerging risks are examined.Results indicate that globally, approximately 11% and 10% of current crop- and grass-lands could be vulnerable to reduction in water availability and may lose some productive capacity, with Africa and the Middle East, China, Europe and Asia particularly at risk. While uncertainties remain, reduction in agricultural land area associated with dietary changes (reduction of food waste and decreased meat consumption) offers the greatest buffer against land loss and food insecurity.     

全球碳排放格网化格局的变化

基于世界各国年碳排放总量数据和人口密度数据,将人口密度作为一项经济-人口综合指标来对碳排放进行空间分配,运用ArcGIS空间分析工具,做出了1950年、1980年、2014年共3期的全球碳排放空间分布格局图 （0.1?×0.1?),并对各期分布格局及变化进行了比较分析。结果显示：1950年主要碳排放区为美国的东部和欧洲地区,1980年新增中国东部、日本、韩国等为全球碳排放的主要区域,2014年新增印度、东南亚为主要排放区。各碳排放区的排放量总体上大幅增加,少数地区略有减少,这与其工业发展所处的不同阶段有关。该数据能够反映当前全球不同区域的碳排放水平的空间格局,为全球变化研究提供基础数据。     

从科学和政策视角看碳预算对全球气候治理的作用

IPCC第五次评估报告进一步阐述和明确了全球平均地表温升与累积CO₂排放之间的近似线性关系。尽管在科学上仍存在一定的不确定性,国际社会对2℃温升目标及所对应的全球累积碳排放空间(即全球碳预算目标)已达成一定的科学认知和政治共识。但如何将碳预算从目标要求转变为各国决策和实际行动,仍是政策制定者们所面临的一个重要问题。在此背景下,提出建立一个有效的碳预算综合管理框架,努力避免人为温室气体排放导致气候系统危害,并利用其科学和政策的双重内涵,来推动谈判进程和加大行动力度,在新型气候治理模式下推动全球减排目标的实现。     

Global change and the intensification of agriculture in the tropics

Bridging understanding of local environmental change with regional and global patterns of land-use and land-cover change (LUCC) remains a key goal and challenge for our understanding of global environmental change. This meta-analysis attempts to bridge local and regional scales of LUCC by demonstrating the ways in which previously published case studies can be compared and used for a broader regional synthesis in the tropics. In addition to providing results from a meta-analysis, this paper suggests ways to make future case studies more widely comparable.     

Transfers and environmental co-benefits of carbon sequestration in agricultural soils: retiring agricultural land in the Upper Mississippi River Basin

This study investigates the carbon sequestration potential and co-benefits from policies aimed at retiring agricultural land in the Upper Mississippi River Basin, a large, heavily agricultural area. In addition to empirically measuring environmental co-benefits, we also compute economic transfers, which have sometimes been referred to as a co-benefit. Very little empirical work measuring the potential magnitude of these transfers has previously been undertaken. We compare and contrast alternative targeting schemes. We find that there are considerable amount of co-benefits and transfers and that the geographic distribution of co-benefits and transfers varies significantly with the specific benefit targeted. This implies that policy design related to targeting can have very important implications for both environmental conditions and income distributions in sub-regions. Issues related to policy design in the presence of co-benefits are considered. Senior authorship is shared equally between the first two authors. All views are those of the authors and not necessarily the funding agencies.     

Bridging organizations in agricultural carbon markets and poverty alleviation: An analysis of pro-Poor carbon market projects in East Africa

International agricultural carbon market projects face significant challenges in delivering greenhouse gas mitigation objectives whilst also seeking to provide additional benefits for poverty alleviation. The carbon credit producer (the smallholder farmer) and carbon credit buyer in the carbon market transaction typically operate at different spatial and temporal scales. Buyers operate at a global scale, responding to opportunities for financial speculation and both private and public climate action plans. Farmers operate within households, farms, and immediate agricultural landscapes, pursuing livelihood and food security needs. These different scales often result in mismatches of timing, payment, and knowledge in market transactions and can be partially rectified by project developers who serve to broker the relationship between the farmers and the buyers. We examined eight East African agricultural carbon market projects to determine how project developers function as bridging organizations and minimize the mismatches between these actors. Results show that projects better bridged the timing and payment gap between buyers and producers when project developers provided non-monetary benefits or direct monetary assistance to farmers. However, knowledge gaps remained a significant barrier for farmers wishing to participate in the market. We discuss how project developers brokered relationships in ways that reflected their interests and highlight the limitations, trade-offs, and challenges that must be overcome if win-win outcomes of poverty alleviation and climate change mitigation are to be realized.     

不同监管强度下碳排放权交易违约行为的实验研究

2017年底中国全国碳市场启动,全球正式运行的碳排放权交易体系达到21个。伴随碳排放权交易的广泛开展,加之产品市场不确定性的冲击,控排企业的违约行为也日益多样化和复杂化。基于此,根据中国碳市场试点地区的通行交易规则,通过在产品市场中引入随机冲击,分析在具有储蓄机制且存在不确定性需求的碳交易体系中,企业违约行为的方式以及监管强度对企业违约行为的影响。研究结果表明:抽查比例较高的强监管设置下被试不会产生系统动机来排放违约,弱监管设置下明显的报告违约会导致排放总量上升。即使面临不确定性冲击,储蓄机制依然能促进控排企业以一个相对有效的方式跨期分配生产量。因此给出如下建议:违约处罚应该分级,报告违约处罚力度应大于排放违约;为提高实际履约率,各地应提高排放报告抽查比例;完善配额储蓄机制。     

Bridging the practitioner-researcher divide: Indicators to track environmental,economic, and sociocultural sustainability of agricultural commodity production

Agricultural systems, with their links to human wellbeing, have been at the heart of sustainability debates for decades. But there is only limited agreement among scientists and stakeholders about the indicators needed to measure the sustainability of agricultural commodity production. We analyze the metrics and indicators of sustainability used in contemporary research on commodity agriculture to demonstrate that new sustainability indicators continue to be developed rapidly by researchers interested in the three principal pillars of sustainability (environmental, economic, and sociocultural). Data from interviews with main agencies and organizations investing in sustainable commodity agriculture reveals that the most commonly used indicators in the academic literature do not overlap with the central aspects of agricultural commodity production that practitioners seek to monitor. Increased dialogue between researchers and practitioners is necessary for better design and use of metrics and indicators that are cost-effective and can be used to compare sustainability outcomes across countries and commodities. We argue that finding common ground among researchers and practitioners requires coordinating ongoing data collection efforts, a greater focus on linking data collection to relevant indicators for sustainable agricultural production, and more attention to the analysis of combined datasets, rather than on the collection of new data on new indicators. By outlining twelve key aspects of agricultural commodity production that the interviewed practitioners from major agencies and organizations deem important to track, our analysis provides a strong framework that can help bridge research-practitioner divisions related to agricultural commodity production and the use of indicators to monitor and assess its sustainability. Our findings are relevant to the search for a parsimonious set of sustainability indicators at a critical time within the context of a new emerging global sustainability agenda.     

The climatic impacts of land surface change and carbon management, and the implications for climate-change mitigation policy

Strategies to mitigate anthropogenic climate change recognize that carbon sequestration in the terrestrial biosphere can reduce the build-up of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere. However, climate mitigation policies do not generally incorporate the effects of these changes in the land surface on the surface albedo, the fluxes of sensible and latent heat to the atmosphere, and the distribution of energy within the climate system. Changes in these components of the surface energy budget can affect the local, regional, and global climate. Given the goal of mitigating climate change, it is important to consider all of the effects of changes in terrestrial vegetation and to work toward a better understanding of the full climate system. Acknowledging the importance of land surface change as a component of climate change makes it more challenging to create a system of credits and debits wherein emission or sequestration of carbon in the biosphere is equated with emission of carbon from fossil fuels. Recognition of the complexity of human-caused changes in climate does not, however, weaken the importance of actions that would seek to minimize our disturbance of the Earth’s environmental system and that would reduce societal and ecological vulnerability to environmental change and variability.