How to tackle climate change, food security and land degradation
Lesser-known options with fewer trade-offs

Date:
July 7, 2020
Source:
Rutgers University
Summary:
How can some of world's biggest problems -- climate change, food
security and land degradation -- be tackled simultaneously? Some
lesser-known options, such as integrated water management and
increasing the organic content of soil, have fewer trade-offs than
many well-known options, such as planting trees, according to a
new study.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
How can some of world's biggest problems -- climate change, food security
and land degradation -- be tackled simultaneously?

==========================================================================
Some lesser-known options, such as integrated water management and
increasing the organic content of soil, have fewer trade-offs than many well-known options, such as planting trees, according to a Rutgers-led
study in the journal Global Change Biology.

"We argue that if we want to have an impact on multiple problems,
we need to be smart about what options get us multiple benefits and
which options come with potential trade-offs," said lead author Pamela
McElwee, an associate professor in the Department of Human Ecology
in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. "We found that many of the better-known
solutions to climate mitigation and land degradation come with a lot
of potentially significant trade-offs." The idea of planting trees in
vast areas to remove carbon dioxide from the air and reduce the impact of climate change, for example, has attracted a lot of attention, with some claiming it's the best "low-hanging fruit" approach to pursue, McElwee
said. But large-scale tree planting could conflict directly with food
security because both compete for available land. It could also diminish biodiversity, if fast-growing exotic trees replace native habitat.

Some potential options that don't get as much attention globally, but
are quite promising with fewer trade-offs, include integrated water
management, reducing post-harvest losses in agriculture, improving fire management, agroforestry (integrating trees and shrubs with croplands
and pastures) and investing in disaster risk management, she said.

The study examined possible synergies and trade-offs with environmental
and development goals. It was based on a massive literature review
-- essentially 1,400 individual literature reviews -- conducted by
scientists at many institutions. They compared 40 options to tackle
the interrelated problems of climate change, food security and land
degradation and looked for trade-offs or co-benefits with 18 categories
of services provided by ecosystems, such as clean air and clean water,
and the United Nations' 17 sustainable development goals. The work was
done as part of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Special Report on Climate Change and Land released last year.

Such reports offer only highlights, and this study includes all the
details.

Several interventions show potentially significant negative impacts
on sustainable development goals and ecosystem services. These include bioenergy (plant-based sources of energy such as wood fuels or ethanol)
and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, large-scale afforestation
and some risk- sharing measures, such as commercial crop insurance.

The results show that a better understanding of the benefits and
trade-offs of different policy approaches can help decision-makers choose
the more effective -- or at least the more benign -- interventions.

"Policy officials can't always undertake the kind of work we did, so we
hope our findings provide a useful shorthand for decision-makers," McElwee said. "We hope it helps them make the choices needed to improve future
policy, such as strengthened pledges to tackle climate mitigation under
the 2015 Paris Agreement. There are a lot of potential steps for reducing carbon emissions that aren't as well-known but should be on the table."

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Rutgers_University. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Pamela McElwee, Katherine Calvin, Donovan Campbell, Francesco
Cherubini,
Giacomo Grassi, Vladimir Korotkov, Anh Le Hoang, Shuaib Lwasa,
Johnson Nkem, Ephraim Nkonya, Nobuko Saigusa, Jean‐Francois
Soussana, Miguel Angel Taboada, Frances Manning, Dorothy Nampanzira,
Pete Smith.

The impact of interventions in the global land and agri‐food
sectors on Nature's Contributions to People and the UN
Sustainable Development Goals. Global Change Biology, 2020; DOI:
10.1111/gcb.15219 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200707140929.htm

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