The Price of Land
Group leaders
Description
All human activities are embedded and constrained by ecosystem processes and functions. However, in the present time the extent of human use of the biosphere alters these processes and functions on a global scale. Human society appropriates about one quarter of total net primary production of the terrestrial biosphere. Production of food, energy and materials, and the related use of land and water account for crucial components and interactions in the Earth System. Our research focus is on the competition for land and water under future scenarios of rising food, energy and material demand, climate change and ambitious mitigation policies. World population will grow to about 9 billion people by the year 2050. As economic wealth increases, people consume more food, and the dietary share of animal products increases. Demand for energy, fibre, forest products, and other biomass-based materials will also strongly increase, especially in currently poor regions which are still in an early stage of economic development. Moreover, there is an increasing area demand for settlements and infrastructure, nature conservation and recreation. With limited availability of land at heterogeneous qualities, it is unclear, how this allocation and management puzzle can be solved.
We, together with colleagues from RDIII, aim at assessing following research questions:
- How will a strong future increase in bioenergy demand affect land rents? What are the limits of global bioenergy production due to the availability of land and water?
- What is the role of technological change in competing uses of land and water for food production, energy production, forestry and biodiversity conservation?
- How important are changes in food demand patterns and habits for global land use patterns and land-use related emissions?
- What is an optimal global land use strategy for maintaining species and landscape diversity?
Land management and technological change
While crop productivity has continuously grown in the past, a slowing pace has to be expected in many regions in the future. Water may pose the most serious limitation to future global food and bioenergy supplies. Rising crop outputs per unit of land and water are essential to feed growing demands. In addition, climate change will alter regional water availability and yield potentials, with tropical regions potentially most strongly affected. The technological and organisational changes required to increase productivity will only be achieved through continuous investments and appropriate institutional settings and incentives. The allocation of land and water resources for different human uses has to be consciously managed. The potential and limitations of different options and the trade-offs between land expansion, increased land use intensity and re-allocation between different uses have to be carefully assessed.
Climate change mitigation
One important aspect in future land management and climate change mitigation will be the global and regional potential of biomass energy, and the role of area expansion, productivity increase and other technological changes. Scenarios on quantities and costs of supplying different types of biomass under spatially explicit land, water and ecosystem guardrails will be fed into the REMIND energy system modelling framework in RD III. In addition, future scenarios on land-use related emission of CO2, CH4 and N2O will also be generated. This will provide crucial information on the potential of climate change mitigation through avoided deforestation and reduced non-CO2 emissions in agricultural production.
Tools
The global land and water use model MAgPIE in connection with the dynamic global vegetation and hydrology model LPJmL provides a consistent link between economic development, food and energy demand in different world regions with spatially explicit patterns of production, land use change and water constraints. The macroeconomic and climate policy feedbacks will be provided by the REMIND model in RD3. As an economic optimisation model, MAgPIE will be used to derive economic values (rents) of land and water resources used in production.
