Bioenergy from “surplus” land: environmental and socio-economic implications

Abstract

The increasing demand for biomass for the production of bioenergy is generating land-use conflicts. These conflicts might be solved through spatial segregation of food/feed and energy producing areas by continuing producing food on established and productive agricultural land while growing dedicated energy crops on so called "surplus" land. Ambiguity in the definition and characterization of surplus land as well as uncertainty in assessments of land availability and of future bioenergy potentials is causing confusion about the prospects and the environmental and socio-economic implications of bioenergy development in those areas. The high level of uncertainty is due to environmental, economic and social constraints not yet taken into account and to the potentials offered by those novel crops and their production methods not being fully exploited. This paper provides a scientific background in support of a reassessment of land available for bioenergy production by clarifying the terminology, identifying constraints and options for ReseARCh ARtiCle BioRisk A peer-reviewed open-access journalJens Dauber et al. / BioRisk 7: 5-50 (2012) 6 an efficient bioenergy-use of surplus land and providing policy recommendations for resolving conflicting land-use demands. A serious approach to factoring in the constraints, combined with creativity in utilizing the options provided, in our opinion, would lead to a more sustainable and efficient development of the bioenergy sector. Unless the sustainability challenge is mastered, the interdependent policy objectives of mitigating climate change, obtaining independence from fossil fuels, feeding and fuelling a growing human world population and maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services will not be met. Despite the advanced developments of bioenergy, we still see regional solutions for designing and establishing sustainable bioenergy production systems with optimized production resulting in social, economic and ecological benefits. Where bioenergy production has been identified as the most suitable option to overcome the given problems of energy security and climate change mitigation, we need to determine which bioenergy cultivation systems are most suitable for the respective types of surplus land, by taking into account issues such as yields, inputs and costs, as well as potential environmental and socio-economic impacts.

To integrate or to segregate food crop and energy crop cultivation at the landscape scale? Perspectives on biodiversity conservation in agriculture in Europe

“…[57]), such as extensive agriculture, grazing, hay production and abandoned agricultural lands. Environmental impacts of restricting energy crops to these lands were discussed in our previous papers [45,58]. From the perspective of biodiversity conservation in agriculture, this LUC may not result in positive biodiversity outcomes; thus, the scenarios should be carefully scrutinised.…”

“…There are two types of land-sparing approaches. The first approach restricts energy crop production to less productive, degraded, marginal or abandoned agricultural land to minimise the LUC effects including iLUC [40,[44][45][46]. The second approach cultivates energy crops on land that has been freed up for other purposes through (sustainable) agricultural intensification, resulting in higher yields per hectare (ha) [47,48].…”

Shedding light on the biodiversity and ecosystem impacts of modern land use.

“…Those concepts of cultivating or re-cultivating of seemingly surplus land are often based on optimistic assessments in the order of millions of hectares being available globally (German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina 2012; Offermann et al 2011). The question whether those estimates of land potentials would bear up against calculations taking environmental and socio-economic constraints into account systematically was adopted in the opinion paper by Dauber et al (2012;this issue). It is stated in this paper that confusion in the applicability of concepts suggesting the utilization of surplus land for bioenergy crop cultivation is caused by ambiguity in the definition and characterization of surplus land as well by uncertainties in assessments of land availability and of potential yields of bioenergy crops when grown on surplus land.…”

“…Therefore we urgently need more integrated energy, agriculture and land-use policies to circumvent adverse impacts of competition for land. Policy recommendations for resolving conflicting landuse demands suggested by Dauber et al (2012) comprise first of all a slow-down in the rapid expansion of the bioenergy sector, at least until adequate and effective controls addressing environmental and social impacts such as biodiversity loss, GHG emissions and displacement of local communities are implemented in bioenergy policies. Further steps would include identifying key or focus areas of true surplus land potentials at regional scales through improved baseline knowledge of actual land use and application of this knowledge in comprehensive land-use management guidelines.…”

Primary Production

“…However, large parts of these areas may be characterized as 'marginal land'. Marginal production conditions can be defined in economic and biophysical terms (Dauber et al 2012). Biophysical constraints to agricultural production include degradation though erosion, contamination, stoniness, and shallow soils and soils of low fertility.…”