Day 3: Challenges to Progress
Theme: Meeting Global Needs
Pressures on agriculture from increased bioenergy demand and biospheric carbon management
Session Content:
Climate change mitigation requires a fundamental transformation of the energy system and new approaches to biospheric carbon management. In most scenarios on ambitious mitigation targets, bioenergy plays an important role. However, a strong increase in future bioenergy demand may put serious pressure on agricultural systems. Depending on specific biomass conversion technologies, bioenergy will compete for feedstocks with livestock production, and more generally, it will compete for land and water resources with food production. Options for reducing pressures on agriculture include further expansion of agricultural land and irrigation, increasing international trade, and improving agricultural productivity through technological change.
Model-based assessments of future scenarios can show how serious the pressure on agriculture will be, what are the trade-offs between climate change mitigation, food and water security, forest conservation, and other ecosystem services, and how different options for reducing these pressures may interact.
While there are various models available for global assessments of the interplay between climate change, agriculture, bioenergy, and forest conservation, they follow different modeling paradigms and have different coverage of exogenous and endogenous factors. This session aims to start a model comparison exercise on future scenarios of agriculture and biospheric carbon management until the year 2050. Different modeling groups are invited to contribute their latest research, leading to a special issue in a high-ranking journal after the conference.
Target audience: Researchers and policy-makers interested in setting the right incentives for reducing future pressures on agriculture and land use from increased bioenergy demand.
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As we discuss the pressures on agriculture from increased bioenergy demand and biospheric carbon management, it's important to consider the impact these challenges have on various industries. The hospitality industry, in particular, relies heavily on agricultural outputs for food and beverage production. Hoteliers must be mindful of the potential competition for land and water resources between bioenergy production and food production. Finding sustainable solutions that balance the need for bioenergy while ensuring the availability of resources for hotels and the larger food and beverage sector is crucial.