The present study discusses new forms of land grabbing related to biofuel production in the light of bioeconomic development. With a specific focus on Brazil, this article debates whether biofuel production is associated with (i) an expansion of agricultural land use—regarded as a process of unsustainable crop intensification or (ii) an increase in crop yield, driven by technical innovation with stable land use—intended as a form of sustainable intensification. We conclude that, in the case of Brazil, the current bioeconomy cannot be assumed to be environmentally sustainable. Starting from Brazil’s experience, the (apparent and latent) relationship between bioeconomy and land grabbing requires a refined investigation in both wealthier and emerging economies, with the aim of proposing effective strategies to achieve truly sustainable development in the primary sector.
In recent years, several non-tariff trade provisions have been regarded as means of holding back transboundary environmental damages. Affected countries have then increasingly come up with trade policies to compensate for or to enforce the adoption of environmental policies elsewhere. These non-tariff trade constraints are claimed to threaten the freedom of trading across nations, as well as the harmonization sought towards the distribution of income and policy measures. Therefore the 'greening' of world trade issues essentially ranges over whether there ought or ought not to be a trade-off between trade and environmental policies. The impacts of free trade and environmental policies on major economic variables (such as trade flows, balances of trade, resource allocation, output, consumption and welfare) are thus studied here, and so is the EKC hypothesis, when such variables are played against the resulting emission levels. The policy response is seen as a political game, played here by two representative parties named North and South. Whether their policy choices, simulated by four scenarios, are right or wrong depends on their policy goals, split into economic and environmental ones.
As a result of the 21st Conference of the Parties (CoP-21) in 2015, the Paris Agreement formally recognised the importance of finance and forests to tackle climate change. However, Article 9 of the convention calls for the leadership of developed countries in mobilising climate finance, while encouraging other parties to provide financial support voluntarily. This is rather an unstable mechanism, since it is strongly affected by political and economic hardships. Forest finance could be established instead that, just like capital markets, might allow for countries to choose between interest-bearing bonds from forest conservation (natural forests) and/or offset (forest plantations). Bonds demand comes out of carbon savings from forest conservation or offsetting forests, whereas bonds supply arises from investments giving off carbon emissions that must be avoided through forest conservation or offset through forest plantations. A Loanable-Forest Funds (LFF) model is developed which shows that forest conservation scenarios require lower rates of interest on forest bonds than forest offsetting ones. Then, unlike the Kyoto Protocol, which emphasises forest offset (forestry-CDM), the formal inclusion of forest conservation (REDD+) in the Paris Agreement might lower the real rates of return to long-term forest investments.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.