Quantifying biodiversity impacts of climate change and bioenergy: the role of integrated global scenarios

Meller, Laura; Vuuren, Detlef van; Cabeza, Mar

doi:10.1007/s10113-013-0504-9

Cited by 15 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 92 publications

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“…Global scenarios balance the overall supply and demand of biomass for both food and energy, which is their strength compared to regionally developed scenarios of agricultural land use. Although the spatial resolution and allocation rules do not allow spatially detailed conclusions, they do provide estimates of the magnitude of impacts at a continental level (Meller et al, 2013).…”

Section: Scenarios Of Climate and Land Use Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Balance between climate change mitigation benefits and land use impacts of bioenergy: conservation implications for European birds

et al. 2014

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Both climate change and habitat modification exert serious pressure on biodiversity. Although climate change mitigation has been identified as an important strategy for biodiversity conservation, bioenergy remains a controversial mitigation action due to its potential negative ecological and socio-economic impacts which arise through habitat modification by land-use change. While the debate continues, the separate or simultaneous impacts of both climate change and bioenergy on biodiversity have not yet been compared. We assess projected range shifts of 156 European bird species by 2050 under two alternative climate change trajectories: a baseline scenario, where the global mean temperature increases by 4°C by the end of the century, and a 2 degrees scenario, where global concerted effort limits the temperature increase to below 2°C. For the latter scenario, we also quantify the pressure exerted by increased cultivation of energy biomass as modelled by IMAGE2.4, an integrated land-use model. The global bioenergy use in this scenario is in the lower end of the range of previously estimated sustainable potential. Under the assumptions of these scenarios, we find that the magnitude of range shifts due to climate change is far greater than the impact of land conversion to woody bioenergy plantations within the European Union, and that mitigation of climate change reduces the exposure experienced by species. However, we identified potential for local conservation conflict between priority areas for conservation and bioenergy production. These conflicts must be addressed by strict bioenergy sustainability criteria that acknowledge biodiversity conservation needs beyond existing protected areas and apply also to biomass imported from outside the European Union.

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Section: Scenarios Of Climate and Land Use Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Balance between climate change mitigation benefits and land use impacts of bioenergy: conservation implications for European birds

et al. 2014

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“…They constitute the backbone of IPCC mitigation reports. Due to the complexity of the underlying bio‐geophysical and socioeconomic systems, recent studies have called for increasing interaction between physical, biological, and social scientists for creating the next generation of IAMs in general (Moss et al ., ) and for bioenergy specifically (Creutzig et al ., ,b; Meller et al ., ). This perspective looks at a particular but crucial subset of assumptions in IAMs that study future bioenergy deployment: yields and effects on global warming, as part of an economically constrained model.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Economic and ecological views on climate change mitigation with bioenergy and negative emissions

Creutzig

2014

GCB Bioenergy

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Climate stabilization scenarios emphasize the importance of land-based mitigation to achieve ambitious mitigation goals. The stabilization scenarios informing the recent IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report suggest that bioenergy could contribute anywhere between 10 and 245 EJ to climate change mitigation in 2100. High deployment of bioenergy with low life cycle GHG emissions would enable ambitious climate stabilization futures and reduce demands on other sectors and options. Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) would even enable so-called negative emissions, possibly in the order of magnitude of 50% of today's annual gross emissions. Here, I discuss key assumptions that differ between economic and ecological perspectives. I find that high future yield assumptions, plausible in stabilization scenarios, look less realistic when evaluated in biophysical metrics. Yield assumptions also determine the magnitude of counterfactual land carbon stock development and partially determine the potential of BECCS. High fertilizer input required for high yields would likely hasten ecosystem degradation. I conclude that land-based mitigation strategies remain highly speculative; a constant iteration between synoptic integrated assessment models and more particularistic and fine-grained approaches is a crucial precondition for capturing complex dynamics and biophysical constraints that are essential for comprehensive assessments.

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“…Policies which do not take into account potential trade-offs, risk aggravating existing rivalries for services in specific areas and exacerbating conflicts. Concerns about soil protection, nutrient supply, water quality, carbon neutrality, biodiversity and global sustainability issues in particular are frequently discussed in literature [7,8,[13][14][15][16][17]. At the same time, there is potential for synergies, which "allow for simultaneous enhancement of more than one ecosystem service" [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In literature, synergies include economic, ecological and social aspects, e.g. concerning biodiversity, fire prevention, profitability of forestry and timber production, employment and rural development [7,8,14,15,17,18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Debates about specific policy measures to adequately cope with the described trade-offs and synergies are ongoing [7,8,11,14,17,21,23]. A crucial step regarding policy design is to take into account stakeholder perspectives and preferences: Stakeholders play a role in decisionmaking and implementation processes by attributing different weight to particular aspects, depending on their interests and values.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Energy wood from forests—stakeholder perceptions in five European countries

Peters

Wirth

Böhr³

et al. 2015

Energ Sustain Soc

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Background: In the last decade, the demand for and supply of energy wood from forests has increased, and experts expect a further increase in the future due to political and societal changes. The objective of this paper was to provide a qualitative analysis of stakeholders' perceptions of current and future trade-offs as well as of synergies between energy wood production and use and other forest ecosystem services (ES). Methods: We developed an explorative research approach and conducted semi-structured interviews with a total of 103 interviewees of six selected stakeholder groups in five European countries: Finland, Germany, Norway, Slovenia and Spain. For the analysis, we adopted a qualitative content analysis approach.

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Quantifying biodiversity impacts of climate change and bioenergy: the role of integrated global scenarios

Cited by 15 publications

References 92 publications

Balance between climate change mitigation benefits and land use impacts of bioenergy: conservation implications for European birds

Balance between climate change mitigation benefits and land use impacts of bioenergy: conservation implications for European birds

Economic and ecological views on climate change mitigation with bioenergy and negative emissions

Energy wood from forests—stakeholder perceptions in five European countries

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