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Land use change is estimated to have generated 17% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in the 2000s, a large part coming from deforestation. The main driver of these emissions is expansion of agricultural activities, for the need of local development in tropical regions. However, they have also been caused by the dynamics of globalisation which has stimulated agricultural trade flows. Thus, today, there are new concerns with respect to how agricultural policies are influencing land use changes in other parts of the world through international market responses. In this work I consider three concrete illustrations of where these effects can be of significant magnitude: i) agriculture intensification in developing countries, ii) trade agreements, and iii) biofuel policies. I find that for each of these policies, market responses are likely to play a significant role in the final greenhouse gas emission balance. Mitigation of emissions through agricultural intensification could have quite beneficial outcomes, but the rebound effect on the demand side would offset a large part of greenhouse gas emission savings attributable to the land sparing effect. With the example of a possible EU-MERCOSUR trade agreement, I also show the adverse effect of liberalising certain specific agricultural products closely connected to land use change dynamics without adequate accompanying measures. Last, the indirect land use change effect of biofuels is likely to offset a large part of their alleged GHG emission savings. Land use change responses depend on many behavioural parameters, however, and providing precise estimates constitutes a challenge. I use different modelling approaches to quantify their magnitude and extensively explore the level of confidence on the basis of current state of econometric findings.New approaches should be elaborated to take account of this externality in public policy assessments, together with an appropriate consideration of the uncertainty ranges associated with these effects. ; La contribution ...

Land use change is estimated to have generated 17% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in the 2000s, a large part coming from deforestation. The main driver of these emissions is expansion of agricultural activities, for the need of local development in tropical regions. However, they have also been caused by the dynamics of globalisation which has stimulated agricultural trade flows. Thus, today, there are new concerns with respect to how agricultural policies are influencing land use changes in other parts of the world through international market responses. In this work I consider three concrete illustrations of where these effects can be of significant magnitude: i) agriculture intensification in developing countries, ii) trade agreements, and iii) biofuel policies. I find that for each of these policies, market responses are likely to play a significant role in the final greenhouse gas emission balance. Mitigation of emissions through agricultural intensification could have quite beneficial outcomes, but the rebound effect on the demand side would offset a large part of greenhouse gas emission savings attributable to the land sparing effect. With the example of a possible EU-MERCOSUR trade agreement, I also show the adverse effect of liberalising certain specific agricultural products closely connected to land use change dynamics without adequate accompanying measures. Last, the indirect land use change effect of biofuels is likely to offset a large part of their alleged GHG emission savings. Land use change responses depend on many behavioural parameters, however, and providing precise estimates constitutes a challenge. I use different modelling approaches to quantify their magnitude and extensively explore the level of confidence on the basis of current state of econometric findings.New approaches should be elaborated to take account of this externality in public policy assessments, together with an appropriate consideration of the uncertainty ranges associated with these effects. ; La contribution ...

IFPRI3; CRP2 ; MTID; PIM ; PR ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)

There is rising scepticism about the potential positive environmental impacts of first generation biofuels. Growing biofuels crops could induce diversion of other crops dedicated to food and feed needs. The relocation of production could increase deforestation and bring significant new volumes of carbon into the atmosphere. In this paper, we develop a methodology for assessing indirect land use effects related to biofuels policies in a Computable General Equilibrium framework. We rely on the trade policy model MIRAGE and on the GTAP 7 database, both of which have been modified and improved for this purpose. The model explicitly represents the role of different types of biofuel feedstock crops, energy demand, and carbon emissions. Land use changes are represented at the level of Agro-Ecological Zones in a dynamic framework using land substitution with nesting of Constant Elasticity of Transformation functions and a land supply module taking into account the effects of economic land expansion. In this integrated global approach, we capture the environmental cost of different land conversion due to biofuels in the carbon budget, taking into account both direct and indirect CO2 emissions related to land use change. We apply this methodology in looking at the impacts of biofuel (ethanol) policies for transportation in the United States and in the European Union with and without ethanol trade liberalization. We find that emissions released because of ethanol programs significantly worsen the total carbon balance of biofuel policies. Ethanol trade liberalisation benefits are ambiguous and depend highly on the parameters governing land use change, in Brazil in particular. We conclude by pointing out the critical aspects that have to be refined in order to improve our understanding of the environmental implications of biofuels development.

There is rising scepticism about the potential positive environmental impacts of first generation biofuels. Growing biofuels crops could induce diversion of other crops dedicated to food and feed needs. The relocation of production could increase deforestation and bring significant new volumes of carbon into the atmosphere. In this paper, we develop a methodology for assessing indirect land use effects related to biofuels policies in a Computable General Equilibrium framework. We rely on the trade policy model MIRAGE and on the GTAP 7 database, both of which have been modified and improved for this purpose. The model explicitly represents the role of different types of biofuel feedstock crops, energy demand, and carbon emissions. Land use changes are represented at the level of Agro-Ecological Zones in a dynamic framework using land substitution with nesting of Constant Elasticity of Transformation functions and a land supply module taking into account the effects of economic land expansion. In this integrated global approach, we capture the environmental cost of different land conversion due to biofuels in the carbon budget, taking into account both direct and indirect CO2 emissions related to land use change. We apply this methodology in looking at the impacts of biofuel (ethanol) policies for transportation in the United States and in the European Union with and without ethanol trade liberalization. We find that emissions released because of ethanol programs significantly worsen the total carbon balance of biofuel policies. Ethanol trade liberalisation benefits are ambiguous and depend highly on the parameters governing land use change, in Brazil in particular. We conclude by pointing out the critical aspects that have to be refined in order to improve our understanding of the environmental implications of biofuels development.

There is rising skepticism about the potential positive environmental impacts of first generation biofuels. Growing biofuel crops could induce diversion of other crops dedicated to food and feed needs. The relocation of production could increase deforestation and bring significant new volumes of carbon into the atmosphere. In this paper, we develop a methodology for assessing the indirect land use change effects related to biofuel policies in a computable general equilibrium framework. We rely on the trade policy model MIRAGE and on the GTAP 7 database, both of which have been modified and improved to explicitly capture the role of different types of biofuel feedstock crops, energy demand and substitution, and carbon emissions. Land use changes are represented at the level of agroecological zones in a dynamic framework using land substitution with nesting of constant elasticity of transformation functions and a land supply module that takes into account the effects of economic land expansion. In this integrated global approach, we capture the environmental cost of different land conversions due to biofuels in the carbon budget, taking into account both direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions related to land use change. We apply this methodology to look at the impacts of biofuel (ethanol) policies for transportation in the United States and in the European Union with and without ethanol trade liberalization. We find that emissions released because of ethanol programs significantly worsen the total carbon balance of biofuel policies. Ethanol trade liberalization benefits are ambiguous and depend highly on the parameters governing land use change, particularly in Brazil. We conclude by pointing out the critical aspects that have to be refined in order to improve our understanding of the environmental implications of biofuel development. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; GRP32 ; MTID

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.

This work was undertaken as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), which is a strategic partnership of CGIAR and Future Earth. CCAFS is carried out with support from CGIAR Fund Donors and through bilateral funding agreements. This research has received funding from the European Union's FP7 Project FoodSecure (grant agreement no. 290693), the European Union's Horizon 2020 project CDLINKS (grant agreement no. 642147), and with technical support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The views expressed in the document cannot be taken to reflect the official opinions of CGIAR, Future Earth, or donors. The contributions of PS, MH, and JFS contributes to the Belmont Forum/FACCE-JPI funded DEVIL project (NE/M021327/1) and to UGRASS (NE/M016900/1). FK acknowledges the support from IIASA's Tropical Futures Initiative (TFI) and the GCP's Managing Global Negative Emissions Technologies (MaGNET) program (www.cger.nies.go.jp/gcp/magnet.html). ; Peer reviewed ; Publisher PDF

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.