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Consumption-based accounts of land-use change related carbon emissions – CoBALUCE

Applicant Dr. Thomas Kastner
Subject Area Accounting and Finance
Term from 2017 to 2023
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 397106073
 
Final Report Year 2024

Final Report Abstract

The expansion and intensification of areas under agricultural and forestry are the main driver of impacts of land use on ecosystems. One main manifestation of these impacts are changes in the carbon stored in ecosystems – for instance if forests are cleared for livestock grazing or the growing of crops. Emissions due to land use and land cover change (or FOLU-emissions) are estimated to presently contribute ~10% to total annual greenhouse gas emissions and about a third to total cumulative emissions historically. An increasingly important driver of ongoing land-use changes and agricultural expansion is the production of products for export markets. Consumption-based accounts (or footprints) of land use and related FOLU emissions - that attribute emissions to the trade and consumption of agricultural and forestry products - can complement territorial accounts (i.e. accounts that monitor where the emissions occur). In CoBALUCE, we focused on the establishment of such consumption-based accounts. A part of the work has focused on establishing consistent global accounts of FOLU-emissions that form the baseline for establishing links to agricultural and forestry products. A main finding here was the large role the perspective or baseline plays for such accounts. We explored two contrasting perspectives. (i) Looking at recent land use changes (above all, ongoing tropical deforestation) and emissions caused by them. (ii) Looking at opportunity costs, asking how much carbon could be taken up by lands in the absence of land use and relating this to the output of the lands. We then attributed the FOLU-emissions to individual agricultural products (e.g., maize, beef) or sectors. Again, here, different assumptions strongly influence the allocation of emissions. However, certain products (e.g. palm oil from Southeast Asia, soybeans from Latin America) appear as major driver of FOLU emissions, regardless of the approach taken. In a last step, we linked the attributed emissions to datasets and models of global trade networks in order to establish links to consumption. In addition, we were also able to produce consumption-based accounts of pressures on ecosystems related to land use change, such as biodiversity decline and the disturbance of intact forest landscapes. Overall, our work shows that a quarter to a third of global FOLU emissions are linked to international trade. The EU and China appear as major importers and consumers of exports linked to high emissions, often originating from tropical regions. These overall patterns also hold in an opportunity cost approach, although the picture is more nuanced when looking at details. The relevance of the work is also shown by the fact that our work has directly contributed to discussions around the EU’s recent regulation to ban the trade with products grown on recently deforested lands. Another major finding was the potentially large role that forestry plays with regards to FOLU emissions, however, present models are not well suited to capture and robustly quantify this role.

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