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Land-based climate change mitigation measures can affect agricultural markets and food security

Nature Food volume 3, pages 110–121 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Earlier studies have noted potential adverse impacts of land-related emissions mitigation strategies on food security, particularly due to food price increases—but without distinguishing these strategies’ individual effects under different conditions. Using six global agroeconomic models, we show the extent to which three factors—non-CO2 emissions reduction, bioenergy production and afforestation—may change food security and agricultural market conditions under 2 °C climate-stabilization scenarios. Results show that afforestation (often simulated in the models by imposing carbon prices on land carbon stocks) could have a large impact on food security relative to non-CO2 emissions policies (generally implemented as emissions taxes). Respectively, these measures put an additional 41.9 million and 26.7 million people at risk of hunger in 2050 compared with the current trend scenario baseline. This highlights the need for better coordination in emissions reduction and agricultural market management policies as well as better representation of land use and associated greenhouse gas emissions in modelling.

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Fig. 1: Representation of climate change mitigation measures and their potential effects on agricultural prices and the risk of hunger.
Fig. 2: Decomposition of three factors.
Fig. 3: Various emissions.
Fig. 4: Regional effects of each land-based mitigation measure on risk of hunger and food price for SSP2.
Fig. 5: Socioeconomic uncertainties in food security indicators.

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Data availability

Model output data are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5793100. Data derived from the original scenario database, which are shown as figures but are not in the above database, are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding authors. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

All code used for data analysis and creating the figures is available via Zenodo at https://zenodo.org/record/5793100#.YcB0w2jP2Uk.

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Acknowledgements

S. Fujimori, W.W., T.H. and K.T. are supported by the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (JPMEERF20202002) of the Environmental Restoration and Conservation Agency of Japan. S. Fujimori, T.H. and K.T. are supported by the Sumitomo Foundation. W.W. was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI (grant no. JP20K20031). H.v.M., A.T. and W.-J.v.Z. received funding from the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Security through the Wageningen University Knowledge Base programme (Circular and Climate Neutral Society, KB-34-003-001 Integrated toolbox for cross-sectoral forward looking assessments and scenarios). S. Frank, P.H. and H.V. received funding from the European Union’s H2020 ENGAGE (grant no. 821471) and NAVIGATE (grant no. 821124). This research was supported by the Economic Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Shinichiro Fujimori, Wenchao Wu.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Engineering, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Shinichiro Fujimori

  2. Center for Social and Environmental Systems Research, National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Tsukuba, Japan

    Shinichiro Fujimori, Tomoko Hasegawa & Kiyoshi Takahashi

  3. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria

    Shinichiro Fujimori, Stefan Frank, Petr Havlik & Hugo Valin

  4. Social Sciences Division, Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS), Tsukuba, Japan

    Wenchao Wu

  5. PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, The Hague, the Netherlands

    Jonathan Doelman & Elke Stehfest

  6. Copernicus Institute for Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands

    Jonathan Doelman

  7. European Commission, Joint Research Center, Seville, Spain

    Jordan Hristov, Ignacio Pérez Domínguez & Amarendra Sahoo

  8. Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, College Park, MD, USA

    Page Kyle

  9. Economic Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC, USA

    Ronald Sands

  10. Wageningen Economic Research, Wageningen University and Research, The Hague, the Netherlands

    Willem-Jan van Zeist, Andrzej Tabeau & Hans van Meijl

  11. Agricultural Economics and Rural Policy Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands

    Hans van Meijl

  12. College of Science and Engineering, Ritsumeikan University, Kusatsu, Japan

    Tomoko Hasegawa

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Contributions

S. Fujimori and W.W. designed the research. W.W. and S. Fujimori carried out analysis of the modelling results. W.W. created figures. S. Fujimori and W.W. wrote the draft of the paper. S. Fujimori, W.W., T.H., J.D., S. Frank, J.H., P.K., R.S., W.-J.v.Z., P.H., I.P.D., A.S., E.S., A.T., H.V. and H.v.M. set up the model. W.W., T.H., J.D., S. Frank, J.H., P.K., R.S. and W.-J.v.Z. simulated the model, and all authors contributed to writing the entire manuscript.

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Correspondence to Shinichiro Fujimori or Wenchao Wu.

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Fujimori, S., Wu, W., Doelman, J. et al. Land-based climate change mitigation measures can affect agricultural markets and food security. Nat Food 3, 110–121 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00464-4

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