Agricultural Development and Land Use Change in India: A Scenario Analysis of Trade‐Offs Between UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Abstract

India has the second largest population in the world and is characterized by a broad diversity in climate, topography, flora, fauna, land use, and socioeconomic conditions. To help ensure food security in the future, agricultural systems will have to respond to global change drivers such as population growth, changing dietary habits, and climate change. However, alterations of how food is produced in the future may conflict with other UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as the protection of land resources and climate change mitigation. It is crucial for decision‐makers to understand potential trade‐offs between these goals to find a balance of human needs and environmental impacts. In this paper, we analyze pathways of agricultural productivity, land use, and land‐cover changes in India until 2030 and their impacts on terrestrial biodiversity and carbon storage. The results show that in order to meet future food production demands, agricultural lands are likely to expand, and existing farmlands need to be intensified. However, both processes will result in biodiversity losses. At the same time, the projections reveal carbon stock increases due to intensification processes and decreases due to conversions of natural land into agriculture. On balance, we find that carbon stocks increase with the scenarios of future agricultural productivity as modeled here. In conclusion, we regard further agricultural intensification as a crucial element to help ensure food security and to slow down the expansion of cropland and pasture. At the same time, policies are required to implement this intensification in a way that minimizes biodiversity losses.

Co-creating local socioeconomic pathways for achieving the sustainable development goals

“…Several studies have argued that the SDGs are not internally consistent, that is, the achievement of some targets will impede the achievement of other targets (although, the converse is also true, where achieving some targets will enable the achievement of others) (Kroll, Warchold and Pradhan 2019 ). This necessitates the realization of trade-offs in implementation outcomes (Breuer, Janetschek and Malerba 2019 ; Hinz et al 2020 ). This can be seen from our work in the synthesis table (Fig.…”

Understanding transitions in farming systems and their effects on livestock rearing and smallholder livelihoods in Telangana, India

“…While transitions in farming systems across India and the study watersheds might be beneficial in some ways, however, not all is positive (George 1986(George , 2014Pingali 2012;Hinz et al 2020). Programs with integrated approaches, e.g., WDPs make development dynamic and involve tradeoffs as well (van Ginkel et al 2013).…”

An Inventory on Black Carbon and Organic Carbon Emission by the Different Vegetative Ecosystem Over India

“…It has the highest mountains in the north, the Thar desert to its west, the Gangetic delta to its east, and the Deccan plateau (agro-ecological diversity) to the south. It experiences drastic land-use changes, climate, topography, ora (11%), fauna (6.5%), and socio-economic conditions due to the ever-increasing population 33 . because of the progressive increase in India's population to 1.27 billion, it has a decadal growth rate of 17.70 % 34 .…”

“…Intensi cation of the crop in agriculture may result in loss of carbon stock in agricultural lands as the land area was reduced approximately two percent from 2015 to 2017 55 . A modelling study also estimated the loss of carbon stock due to land-use intensi cation or agricultural land change 33 . Agricultural activities such as fertilizer and manure addition contribute to the replenishment of carbon stock, favouring sequestration and long-term storage of OC in the cropland ecosystem during our study period 74 .…”