Suchergebnisse

Die steigenden Treibhausgasemissionen und die damit verbundenen Klimaauswirkungen bedrohen zunehmend die Ökosysteme weltweit. Da die lokalen Auswirkungen des Klimawandels von örtlichen Emissionsquellen entkoppelt sind, müssen regionale Klimaschutz- und Anpassungsstrategien im globalen Kontext beurteilt werden. Das globale partielle Gleichgewichtsmodell der Land- und Forstwirtschaft GLOBIOM wurde entwickelt, um u.a. die "Leakage"-Effekte von regionalen Strategien zu analysieren. Die Modellierung internationaler Handelsströme in GLOBIOM ist der methodische Schwerpunkt in dieser Dissertation. Dazu wurde ein mathematischer Programmierungsansatz entwickelt, um bilaterale Handelsströme zu kalibrieren. Die Modellanalysen zeigen, dass die Politiken der EU und U.S. zur Förderung von Agrotreibstoffen nicht notwendigerweise zur Senkung der globalen Treibhausgasemissionen beitragen. Verantwortlich sind indirekte Landnutzungsänderungen in anderen Weltregionen, welche zusätzliche Emissionen freisetzen können. Weitere Modellanalysen zeigen, dass die Abholzung von tropischen Regenwald im Kongo-Becken in den nächsten zwanzig Jahren aufgrund der steigenden Nachfrage der regionalen und weltweiten Bevölkerung zunehmen wird. Darüber hinaus können Investitionen in die Verkehrsinfrastruktur und Landwirtschaft zusätzliche Entwaldung stimulieren. Darüber hinaus wurden die Auswirkungen des Klimawandels auf die ostasiatische Lebensmittelmärkte aus einer globalen Perspektive untersucht. Internationaler Handel kann entweder positive Einflüsse des Klimawandels für regionale Konsumenten durch die Stimulierung höherer Exporte reduzieren oder potenzielle Verluste durch steigende Importe abfedern. Die Handelseinflüsse sind jedoch von den Änderungen des relativen Wettbewerbsvorteils der Region abhängig. Eine bessere Koordinierung der nationalen und regionalen Klimaschutz- und Anpassungsstrategien auf internationaler Ebene wäre erforderlich, um das Risiko von "Leakage"-Effekten zu reduzieren. ; Increasing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and the induced climate change impacts are threatening more and more ecosystems worldwide. Hence, regional mitigation and adaptation policies must be assessed in the global context, since climate change impacts are disconnected from locations of emission sources. The bottom-up global partial equilibrium model on agriculture and forestry GLOBIOM is used to assess magnitude and risks of leakage of climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies through international trade. Improving international trade representation in GLOBIOM has been the major methodological contribution of this dissertation. Bilateral trade policies have been introduced and a programming method has been implemented to calibrate bilateral trade flows in a spatial equilibrium model. The model has been applied to three distinct case studies including biofuel policy, deforestation and food security. The model results show that the European and the U.S. biofuel policies are very likely to not reduce GHG emissions globally due to substantial leakage of emissions from additional conversion of natural land to agriculture in the rest of the world. In addition, deforestation in the Congo Basin could significantly rise in the next twenty years due to increasing regional and global population needs as well as investments in transportation infrastructures and agriculture. Furthermore, the impact of climate change on eastern Asian food markets is addressed in a global perspective. Trade can either reduce potential gains from climate change by stimulating higher exports or mitigate the losses for consumers by increasing imports depending on the relative competitive advantage of the region in global agricultural production. Therefore, a better coordination of national and regional climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies at the international level would be highly desirable in order to reduce the risk of emission leakage. ; by Aline Mosnier ; Zsfassung in dt. Sprache ; Wien, Univ. für Bodenkultur, Diss., 2014 ; OeBB ; (VLID)1931250

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.

The role of improving the enforcement of Brazil's Forest Code in reducing deforestation in the Amazon has been highlighted in many studies. However, in a context of strong political pressure for loosening environmental protections, the future impacts of a nationwide implementation of the Forest Code on both environment and agriculture remain poorly understood. Here, we present a spatially explicit assessment of Brazil's 2012 Forest Code through the year 2050; specifically, we use a partial equilibrium economic model that provides a globally consistent national modeling framework with detailed representation of the agricultural sector and spatially explicit land-use change. We test for the combined or isolated impacts of the different measures of the Forest Code, including deforestation control and obligatory forest restoration with or without environmental reserve quotas. Our results show that, if rigorously enforced, the Forest Code could prevent a net loss of 53.4 million hectares (Mha) of forest and native vegetation by 2050, 43.1 Mha (81%) of which are in the Amazon alone. The control of illegal deforestation promotes the largest environmental benefits, but the obligatory restoration of illegally deforested areas creates 12.9Mha of new forested area. Environmental reserve quotas further protect 5.8Mha of undisturbed natural vegetation. Compared to a scenario without the Forest Code, by 2050, cropland area is only reduced by 4% and the cattle herd by 8%. Our results show that compliance with the Forest Code requires an increase in cattle productivity of 56% over four decades, with a combination of a higher use of supplements and an adoption of semi-intensive pasture management. We estimate that the enforcement of the Forest Code could contribute up to 1.03 PgCO2e to the ambitious GHG emissions reduction target set by Brazil for 2030.