Impact of land-use-based climate mitigation policies on biodiversity and food security
Remi Prudhomme  1@  , Adriana De Palma  2, 3@  , Patrice Dumas  1@  , Ricardo Gonzalez  2@  , Harold Levrel  1@  , Andy Purvis  2, 3@  , Thierry Brunelle  1@  
1 : Centre International de Recherche sur lÉnvironnement et le Développement  (UMR CIRED)  -  Website
Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement : UMR56-2015, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, AgroParisTech, Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique : UMR8568
45 bis, avenue de la Belle Gabrielle - 94736 Nogent-sur-Marne Cedex -  France
2 : Department of Life Sciences
Imperial College London, Silwood Park Campus, Ascot, Berkshire SL5 7PY, UK -  Royaume-Uni
3 : Natural History Museum  (NHM)  -  Website
Cromwell Road London SW75BD -  Royaume-Uni

Agriculture faces three great challenges: feeding a growing population, reducing its impact on biodiversity and minimizing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Therefore, it is important to assess synergies and trade-offs in meeting these challenges. In this paper, we evaluate a broad range of scenarios that achieve 4.3 GtCO2/year GHG mitigation in the Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land-Use (AFOLU) sector by 2100. Scenarios include varying mixes of three GHG mitigation policies: biofuel crop production, dietary change and reforestation of pasture. We evaluated the impacts of these scenarios on food security and biodiversity conservation. We find that focusing mitigation on a single policy can lead to positive results for one indicator, but with significant negative side effects on others. For example, mitigation dominated by reforestation favors biodiversity criteria, but is projected to lead to sharp increases in food prices. Mitigation scenarios focusing on biofuels have strong adverse effects on both biodiversity and food security indicators. A balanced portfolio of all three mitigation policies, while not optimal for any single criterion, minimizes trade-offs by avoiding large negative effects on food security and biodiversity conservation. At the regional scale, the projected impact of mitigation policies are similar to proection at global scale, except for Canada and Middle-East. Due to the small area of agricultural land in these regions, their average regional levels of biodiversity are mainly influenced by the state of their natural areas and not by agricultural land-use changes.


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