Providing food and other products to a growing human population while safeguarding natural ecosystems and the provision of their services is a significant scientific, social and political challenge. With food demand likely to double over the next four decades, anthropization is already driving climate change and is the principal force behind species extinction, among other environmental impacts. The sustainable intensification of production on current agricultural lands has been suggested as a key solution to the competition for land between agriculture and natural ecosystems. However, few investigations have shown the extent to which these lands can meet projected demands while considering biophysical constraints. Here we investigate the improved use of existing agricultural lands and present insights into avoiding future competition for land. We focus on Brazil, a country projected to experience the largest increase in agricultural production over the next four decades and the richest nation in terrestrial carbon and biodiversity. Using various models and climatic datasets, we produced the first estimate of the carrying capacity of Brazil's 115 million hectares of cultivated pasturelands. We then investigated if the improved use of cultivated pasturelands would free enough land for the expansion of meat, crops, wood and biofuel, respecting biophysical constraints (i.e., terrain, climate) and including climate change impacts. We found that the current productivity of Brazilian cultivated pasturelands is 32–34% of its potential and that increasing productivity to 49–52% of the potential would suffice to meet demands for meat, crops, wood products and biofuels until at least 2040, without further conversion of natural ecosystems. As a result up to 14.3 Gt CO2 Eq could be mitigated. The fact that the country poised to undergo the largest expansion of agricultural production over the coming decades can do so without further conversion of natural habitats provokes the question whether the same can be true in other regional contexts and, ultimately, at the global scale.

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When enough should be enough: Improving the use of current agricultural lands could meet production demands and spare natural habitats in Brazil

The global response to warming of 1.5oC comprises transitions in land and ecosystem, energy, urban and infrastructure, and industrial systems. The feasibility of mitigation and adaptation options, and the enabling conditions for strengthening and implementing the systemic changes, are assessed in this chapter.

Strengthening and Implementing the Global Response

Poorly planned, large-scale ecological restoration projects may displace agricultural activities and potentially lead to the clearance of native vegetation elsewhere, with associated impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services. Yet few studies have considered these risks and the ways in which restoration can increase competition for land. Here, we address this issue by examining whether large-scale restoration of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest could displace cattle production, as a result of land shortages. Although the risks of displacement are indeed high when reforestation is planned in areas with high cattle productivity, we discuss how these risks can be minimized through a combination of productivity increases, a regional restoration planning framework, and the prioritization of marginal agricultural land for restoration. We also consider how restoration can, in some circumstances, be made more economically sustainable by incorporating income-generating activities such as exploitation of timber an...

Creating space for large-scale restoration in tropical agricultural landscapes

Intensification of Brazilian cattle ranching systems has attracted both national and international attention due to its direct relation with Amazon deforestation on the one hand and increasing demand of the global population for meat on the other. Since Brazilian cattle ranching is predominantly pasture-based, we particularly focus on pasture management. We summarize the most recurrent opportunities and risks associated with pasture intensification that are brought up within scientific and political dialogues, and discuss them within the Brazilian context. We argue that sustainable intensification of pasturelands in Brazil is a viable way to increase agricultural output while simultaneously sparing land for nature. Since environmental degradation is often associated with low-yield extensive systems in Brazil, it is possible to obtain higher yields, while reversing degradation, by adopting practices like rotational grazing, incorporation of legumes and integrated crop-livestock-forestry systems. Technical assistance is however essential, particularly for small- and medium-scale farmers. Sound complementary policies and good governance must accompany these measures so that a ‘rebound effect’ does not lead to increased deforestation and other adverse social and environmental impacts. It is also important that animal welfare is not compromised. Although the discussion is presented with respect to Brazil, some aspects are relevant to other developing countries.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/B64397C3A6B8E5B6875CB4224ACC29B4/S1751731114001566a.pdf/div-class-title-intensification-of-cattle-ranching-production-systems-socioeconomic-and-environmental-synergies-and-risks-in-brazil-div.pdf

Intensification of cattle ranching production systems: socioeconomic and environmental synergies and risks in Brazil.

Lead Authors: Mustafa Babiker (Sudan), Paolo Bertoldi (Italy), Marcos Buckeridge (Brazil), Anton Cartwright (South Africa), Wenjie Dong (China), James Ford (Canada/UK), Sabine Fuss (Germany), JeanCharles Hourcade (France), Debora Ley (Guatemala/Mexico), Reinhard Mechler (Germany), Peter Newman (Australia), Anastasia Revokatova (Russian Federation), Seth Schultz (USA), Linda Steg (Netherlands), Taishi Sugiyama (Japan)

Chapter 4: Strengthening and implementing the global response

There has been a concerted effort by the international scientific community to understand the multiple causes and patterns of land-cover change to support sustainable land management. Here, we examined biophysical suitability, and a novel integrated index of “Economic Pressure on Land” (EPL) to explain land cover in the year 2000, and estimated the likelihood of future land-cover change through 2050, including protected area effectiveness. Biophysical suitability and EPL explained almost half of the global pattern of land cover (R
 2 = 0.45), increasing to almost two-thirds in areas where a long-term equilibrium is likely to have been reached (e.g. R
 2 = 0.64 in Europe). We identify a high likelihood of future land-cover change in vast areas with relatively lower current and past deforestation (e.g. the Congo Basin). Further, we simulated emissions arising from a “business as usual” and two reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) scenarios by incorporating data on biomass carbon. As our model incorporates all biome types, it highlights a crucial aspect of the ongoing REDD + debate: if restricted to forests, “cross-biome leakage” would severely reduce REDD + effectiveness for climate change mitigation. If forests were protected from deforestation yet without measures to tackle the drivers of land-cover change, REDD + would only reduce 30 % of total emissions from land-cover change. Fifty-five percent of emissions reductions from forests would be compensated by increased emissions in other biomes. These results suggest that, although REDD + remains a very promising mitigation tool, implementation of complementary measures to reduce land demand is necessary to prevent this leakage.

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Nga Nguyen

Papers

Biophysical suitability, economic pressure and land-cover change: a global probabilistic approach and insights for REDD+