13 Aug 2024
According to a study from a team led by LMU researchers Julia Schneider and Florian Zabel, an expansion of agricultural land is to be expected, especially in the tropics.
Agricultural expansion is one of the world's biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and the loss of natural habitats and biodiversity. Without decisive policy action, this trend is likely to continue despite the many negative impacts due to increasing demand for agricultural commodities for food, feed, fiber and bioenergy, according to a new study led by Julia Schneider, a PhD student at LMU Munich. Together with Florian Zabel, associate professor at LMU and senior researcher at University of Basel, and an interdisciplinary team of researchers, she has investigated which areas of the world will be most affected by future agricultural expansion.
In order to find this out, the team developed an integrative land use model that was able to identify the most profitable areas worldwide for possible future agricultural expansion, taking both, economic and agro-ecological criteria into account at the same time. The economic and ecological impact of land-use change was then assessed.
Researchers consider further expansion of the cultivation of animal feed such as soy in tropical regions to be problematic.
© picture alliance / imageBROKER | Michael RunkelThe results of their study were published in Nature Sustainability and show that agricultural expansion in the future is to be expected primarily in the tropics, where there is still great agricultural potential despite climate change.
Although a 3.6 percent increase in global arable land by 2030, as expected by the FAO and OECD, would increase global agricultural production by 2 percent, the associated land-use changes would emit around 17 Gigatons of CO2 in the long term (almost half of current annual CO2 emissions worldwide) and lead to a 26 percent decline in biodiversity intactness in the affected areas. "This would be a particularly worrying development for the global climate protection goals and efforts to preserve biodiversity," says Florian Zabel.
We were surprised that, contrary to our expectations, even some regions benefited economically from the designation of protected areas and that overall agricultural production was only slightly reduced by the nature conservation measures.Julia Schneider
In the light of recent political efforts to protect nature, forests and biodiversity globally, the researchers also assessed the impact of global nature conservation policies and the resulting consequences. For example, the study showed that conservation policies that prevent the expansion of agricultural land into forests, wetlands and existing protected areas shift expansion pressure from forests to grasslands.
“We were surprised that, contrary to our expectations, even some regions benefited economically from the designation of protected areas and that overall agricultural production was only slightly reduced by the nature conservation measures,” says Julia Schneider. “The resulting greenhouse gas emissions were also significantly reduced. However, our results also show that the shift to grassland can have the opposite effect on biodiversity.”
In the context of the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Convention, which aims to protect 30 percent of the global land surface by 2030, among other things, the question arises as to which areas should be prioritized for protection. This is where the study makes a valuable contribution, as it identifies regions that will be particularly threatened in the future and highlights the potential impact on the economy and environment.
This means that protected areas can be planned in such a way that they achieve co-benefits on as many objectives as possible, such as climate and biodiversity protection, while at the same time taking economic interests into account. Based on the results, the effectiveness of nature conservation strategies could be improved and agricultural production could be better reconciled with various environmental protection goals.
Julia M. Schneider, Ruth Delzeit, Christian Neumann, Tobias Heimann, Ralf Seppelt, Franziska Schuenemann, Mareike Söder, Wolfram Mauser, Florian Zabel. Effects of profit-driven cropland expansion and conservation policies. Nature Sustainability, 2024.