Biodiversity impacts of bioenergy crop production: a state‐of‐the‐art review

Abstract

The use of biomass as feedstock for energy is often associated with increased claims on land, competition with food production and impacts on other ecosystem services. Studies on sustainability aspects of bioenergy production often indicate biodiversity as a key concern. This article presents a first comprehensive review of published impacts of bioenergy crop production on biodiversity, evaluates the drivers and pressures of biodiversity change and summarizes current trends and impacts. The review provides insight into the types of biodiversity indicators applied under a range of conditions and the mitigating measures proposed to minimize negative impacts or realize biodiversity benefits. The 53 selected publications give diverse results that are explained by the various spatial scales, production systems and regions, time horizons, methodologies and biodiversity indicators used. Reported impacts depend on initial land use and are mostly negative, especially in tropical regions. The impacts of second generation bioenergy crops tend to be less negative than first generation ones, and are in some cases positive (at the field level), in particular in temperate regions. Land-use change appears as the key driver of biodiversity change, whereas the associated habitat loss, alterations in species richness and abundance are the main impacts addressed. Such changes are often paired with the (initiation of a) process of biological homogenization. The article confirms that concerns about the expansion of bioenergy crop production not only relate to the direct effects on biodiversity by replacing natural vegetation, but increasingly to indirect effects as well. These effects have, however, shown to be difficult to quantify. At the same time, the land sparing vs. land sharing debate receives growing attention, whereas little evidence exists in bioenergy literature on the impacts of large-scale application of these strategies on (agro)biodiversity. Following the findings of the review, the article finally provides recommendations for future research.

Jatropha cultivation in Malawi and Mozambique: impact on ecosystem services, local human well-being, and poverty alleviation

“…Quantifying ILUC effects can be very complex (Finkbeiner 2014), but is a major gap in the current biofuel literature in Africa (Gasparatos et al 2015). Though not investigated specifically in this study, direct and indirect largescale woodland conversion at Niqel plantation could also have had substantive biodiversity impacts (von Maltitz et al 2010, 2014, Immerzeel et al 2014). Given the small, direct land-use change associated with growing Jatropha in hedges, we believe that ILUC effects for BERL smallholders will be minimal.…”

Bioenergy production and environmental impacts

“…The impact of biofuel production on biodiversity depends on the initial land use condition, the type of bioenergy production system, and the landscape configuration (Correa et al 2017;Immerzeel et al 2014). Land use conversion is the most important factor that affects biological abundance through the direct change of land use condition and production system, which also depends on the plant type and planting locations.…”

Strategy Elements for a Sustainable Bioenergy Policy Based on Scenarios and Systems Modeling: Germany as Example

“…These biomass-to-bioenergy flows enable us to assess related effects. In terms of bioenergy provision, many different effects are discussed, including those on land use, cumulative environmental effects, and socioeconomic effects (i.e., [38,39]). In our assessment it was decided to cover them comprehensively and therefore a set of seven indicators was defined as summarized in Tab.…”