There is an urgent need for countries to transition their national food and land-use systems toward food and nutritional security, climate stability, and environmental integrity. How can countries satisfy their demands while jointly delivering the required transformative change to achieve global sustainability targets? Here, we present a collaborative approach developed with the FABLE—Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land, and Energy—Consortium to reconcile both global and national elements for developing national food and land-use system pathways. This approach includes three key features: (1) global targets, (2) country-driven multi-objective pathways, and (3) multiple iterations of pathway refinement informed by both national and international impacts. This approach strengthens policy coherence and highlights where greater national and international ambition is needed to achieve global goals (e.g., the SDGs). We discuss how this could be used to support future climate and biodiversity negotiations and what further developments would be needed.

No abstract

No abstract

The analysis of the costs for action versus inaction in addressing land degradation at national and sub-national (regional and district) levels in Russia showed that the total annual costs of land degradation due to land use and cover change only are about 189 billion USD in 2009 as compared with 2001, i.e. about 23.6 billion USD annually, or about 2 % of Russia's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2010. These land use and land cover changes occurred in the area of 130 million ha. The area of arable lands decreased by 25 % during the period of the economic reforms between 1990 and 2009. The total economic value of ecosystem goods and services is estimated to equal about 3700 billion USD in Russia, exceeding the conventional GDP by 3 times. The costs of action against land degradation are lower than the costs of inaction in Russia by 5-6 times over a 30-year horizon. Almost 92 % of the costs of action are made up of the opportunity costs of action. The methodology of the economics of land degradation can be successfully applied in peculiar socioeconomic conditions of Russia, but the lack of harmonization of methods and indicators brings uncertainty to quantitative assessments.

No abstract

On the basis of data on trade among the Russian Federation, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, an attempt is made to assess the existing trends in trade before they formed the Customs Union within the Eurasian Economic Community and the very first results of the Customs Union activities. The removal of tariffs in mutual trade between Russia and Belarus, as our study shows, has not led to the development of mutual trade, although it helped Belarus to improve some of its macroeconomic indicators. Kazakhstan's accession to the Preferential Trade Agreement between Russia and Belarus stimulated the trade creation effect in some commodity groups (73 -articles of iron and steel). At the same time, in the overwhelming majority of trade sectors that showed a relatively high trade activity of the CU countries, a large share belongs to the EU countries; China also shows growing dynamics in trade with the CU countries. Using two options of the gravity model, we evaluated the Customs Union effects, which in their entirety confirmed that the Customs Union is dominated not by mutual trade but by trade with the countries from the rest of the world, including the Commonwealth of Independent States countries. Moreover, the extended option of the model, which takes into account the export of the The Customs Union in the CIS

The paper analyses the current ecological consequences of agricultural growth in Russia’s main regions (oblast level) during 2011–2019. Our main hypothesis was that local environ­mental risks, like waste concentration, would be closely related to global climate risks such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the production of crops, meat, milk, eggs, and from land use change (LUC) activities leading to a larger carbon footprint. We first analyze official data for agricultural waste and find that 30% of it is concentrated in just two regions (Belgorod and Kursk), while they produce only 10% of agricultural value of Russia. Next, we find that manure nutrients have a high concentration in regions where the livestock production is not balanced with appropriate nutrient use on croplands (Dagestan, Astrakhan, Leningrad, and Pskov regions) which might lead to the pollution of soils and local waters. Next, we test the GLOBIOM partial equilibrium model to evaluate proper agricultural protein production quantities in Russian regions and respective GHG emissions from crop, livestock and land use change activities. We find that 21% of the GHG emission in 2019 came from the conversion of former abandoned agricultural land into cropland (starting from 2011). While some regions such as Krasnodar, Rostov, and Stavropol increase productivity with low carbon footprint, others, like Amur and Bryansk, increase production by cropland expansion without respective productivity growth which leads to higher carbon footprint. Our results for livestock operations show that the main hypothesis did not hold up because regions which increase meat production, like Belgorod, Kursk, Pskov, and Leningrad, have a lower carbon footprint due to the production of pork meat and poultry which have lower GHG emissions due to specific digestion. On the other hand, these regions experience a higher environmental footprint due to the large concentration of waste which could be harmful for local eco­systems. Finally, we use the model to project possible future development up to 2030. Our results show the possible growth of crop and livestock products in most of the regions driven by external demand for food. The extensive scenario shows additional GHG emissions from cropland expansion, while the intensive scenario reveals a larger growth rate accompanied by productivity growth and lower carbon footprint, which is essential in harmonizing the current agricultural and climate policy of Russia.

No abstract