Abstract: Land use change has been the primary driving force of human alteration of terrestrial ecosystems. With 80% of agricultural land dedicated to livestock production, the sector is an important lever to attenuate land requirements for food production and carbon emissions from land use change. In this study, we quantify impacts of changing human diets and livestock productivity on land dynamics and depletion of carbon stored in vegetation, litter and soils. Across all investigated productivity pathways, lower consumption of livestock products can substantially reduce deforestation (47-55%) and cumulative carbon losses (34-57%). On the supply side, already minor productivity growth in extensive livestock production systems leads to substantial CO2 emission abatement, but the emission saving potential of productivity gains in intensive systems is limited, also involving trade-offs with soil carbon stocks. If accounting for uncertainties related to future trade restrictions, crop yields and pasture productivity, the range of projected carbon savings from changing diets increases to 23-78%. Highest abatement of carbon emissions (63-78%) can be achieved if reduced consumption of animal-based products is combined with sustained investments into productivity increases in plant production. Our analysis emphasizes the importance to integrate demand- and supply-side oriented mitigation strategies and to combine efforts in the crop and livestock sector to enable synergies for climate protection.

Abstract: Highlights • Governance impacts on land use dynamics are modeled at the global scale with an agro-economic dynamic optimization model. • Improved governance performance lowers deforestation, reduces cropland expansion and increases agricultural yield. • Good governance makes a decisive difference in investment for increasing yields in developing regions. • Weak governance increases food prices, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. • Improving governance performance has significant impacts on poverty reduction. Abstract Deforestation, mainly caused by unsustainable agricultural expansion, results in a loss of biodiversity and an increase in greenhouse gas emissions, as well as impinges on local livelihoods. Countries’ governance performance, particularly with respect to property rights security, exerts significant impacts on land-use patterns by affecting agricultural yield-related technological investment and cropland expansion. This study aims to incorporate governance factors into a recursive agro-economic dynamic model to simulate governance impacts on land-use patterns at the global scale. Due to the difficulties of including governance indicators directly into numerical models, we use lending interest rates as discount rates to reflect risk-accounting factors associated with different governance scenarios. In addition to a reference scenario, three scenarios with high, low and mixed divergent discount rates are formed to represent weak, strong and fragmented governance. We find that weak governance leads to slower yield growth, increased cropland expansion and associated deforestation, mainly in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia. This is associated with increasing food prices, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. By contrast, strong governance performance provides a stable political and economic situation which may bring down deforestation rates, stimulate investment in agricultural technologies, and induce fairly strong decreases in food prices.

Abstract: In the framework of AgMIP (Agricultural Model Intercomparison Project; www.agmip.org), several articles have been published in which about 10 leading, agro-economic models analysed the impact of climate change on agricultural yields, area, consumption and food prices (Lotze-Campen et al. 2014, Nelson et. al 2014a,b Schmitz et al. 2014). A part of these articles are available freely through the publisher (e.g. http://www.pnas.org/content/111/9/3274). PIK has not only contributed through model simulations with the spatially explicit, agro-economic model MAgPIE, but also by coordinating this activity. Starting with AgMIP phase II in 2015, AgMIP has now for the first time conducted the model-analysis for different “Shared Socio-economic Pathways” (short SSPs). A first study has been published in the renowned journal “Environmental Research Letters” (Wiebe et al. 2015). These are important contributions to task 2.3 which aimed at simulating the impact of global climate changes on agricultural systems.Another study which is under revision in the journal PNAS, investigates the impact of climate change on agricultural welfare. The results of this paper are based on simulations with 20 different General Circulation Models (GCMs). This provides the opportunity to understand the uncertainty inherent in the different climate models better and improves the credibility of results.All mentioned articles and results are based on harmonized yield changes, which are a result of multi-model simulations, conducted in the framework of ISI-MIP (Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project) and coordinated at PIK. These model results are publicly available (www.isi-mip.org) and part of an open source strategy of the institute. The modelling group around the agro-economic model MAgPIE (Model of Agriculture and its Impact on the Environment) currently discusses an open source strategy for publishing the model code. As a first step, a detailed description of the model will be available shortly (http://redmine.pik-potsdam.de/projects/magpie/wiki).PIK and the modelling group around MAgPIE have also contributed to the geoportal GLUES (Global Assessment of Land Use Dynamics, Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Ecosystem Services) where project partners can publish and share global and regional data sets as well as model results on scenarios of land use, climate change and economic development. MAgPIE results on landuse change, emissions and deforestation for different socio-economic scenarios have been made available there (http://catalog-glues.ufz.de/terraCatalog/Start.do;jsessionid=80F6A3D2C446674B898881D0589887E4). No Label