Growing Better: Ten Critical Transitions to Transform Food and Land Use

(The Food and Land Use Coalition) The Global Consultation Report of the Food and Land Use Coalition September 2019 -- For people, nature and climate -- There is a remarkable opportunity to transform food and land use systems, but as the challenges are growing, we need to act with great urgency. The global report from the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU) proposes a reform agenda – centred around ten critical transitions – of real actionable solutions. These could deliver the needed change to boost progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement, help mitigate the negative effects of climate change, safeguard biodiversity, ensure more healthy diets for all, drastically improve food security and create more inclusive rural economies. READ MORE

Excerpts from "Growing Better: Ten Critical Transitions to Transform Food and Land Use": ... Policies that add to competition for land – such as subsidy regimes driving agricultural expansion, or biofuels mandates directly or indirectly driving deforestation or other ecosystem conversion – would be phased out.

Exceptional global price spikes in 2007-2008 and 2010-2012 were largely caused by adverse weather, exacerbated by certain policies, including biofuel mandates.12

Food prices have been mostly benign during this period, either stable or declining in real terms. Exceptional global price spikes in 2007-2008 and 2010-2012 were largely caused by adverse weather, exacerbated by certain policies, including biofuel mandates.12

Bioenergy comes in different forms and is produced in many different ways – ranging from foraged wood for open cookstoves, through to advanced third generation biofuels (using algae, for example). For the purposes of this report, the essential questions include; (i) whether bioenergy production competes with land for food production or natural ecosystems; and (ii) whether it is a cost-effective climate mitigation approach.

The potential justification for biofuels is greater for hard to abate sectors – in particular long-haul air travel. For these sources, biofuels could help reducing use of fossil fuel and keep more oil in the ground. Even for these sources, however, the challenge cannot justify deploying biofuels solutions that sacrifice large quantities of either existing or potential carbon storage, and policies will need to come with robust sustainability schemes and incentives to moderate travel demand. It is therefore crucial to put sufficient resources into energy options, potentially including biofuel options, that do not come in competition with land for nature and food security.

This report recommends that while more advanced forms of bioenergy, including from waste, can likely play a modest though potentially important role in decarbonisation over the next 30 years, the focus of bioenergy efforts must be on forms of bioenergy that do not, or only minimally, increase pressure on land. For both environmental and economic cost effectiveness reasons, at no point should bioenergy be allowed to drive deforestation or other conversion of natural ecosystems, or to get in the way of degraded land restoration.x

Existing bioenergy mandates, targets and incentives for crop based-biofuels should be phased out as is, and new policies introduced which better account for potential risks including adverse effect and risks of conversion of natural ecosystems and high carbon stock, including through land diversion. Inefficient sectors (low yielding or carbon-saving crops, feedstocks associated to deforestation) should be phased out of these policies, and incentives redirected towards more advanced bioenergy – including waste-based –or other enewable technology research and development, or tropical forest protection and regeneration.

x The 2019 IPCC Climate Change and Land report highlights that food security may be threatened if land-based bioenergy displaces crops and livestock, with associated risks to terrestrial ecosystems and water scarcity. It also estimates that if the global area dedicated to bioenergy production is less – under some circumstances far less – than 100 million hecates, there will be low to moderate risks to food security, land degradation and desertification.93

xvii Other interventions that indirectly affect agriculture but are outside the scope of support as conventionally defined, are mandates for use of biofuels and improving access of poor people to food through social safety net programs.

Phase out policies that intensify competition for land, such as public support that drives agricultural or urban expansion, or biofuels mandates that directly or indirectly promote deforestation or other ecosystem conversion.

In India, the work of FOLU is being spearheaded by a core group of four organisations: Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), and WRI India. A key component of the FOLU work is the development of decision-support tools by the FABLE Consortium, led by IIMA, which can inform policy decisions in rigorous ways, beginning with a test case on the impacts of biofuels on India’s food and land use systems.