Spatially explicit analysis of biodiversity loss due to different bioenergy policies in the European Union

Date:
2018/06/13

Time:
15:30

Room:
A2 Wivi

Spatially explicit analysis of biodiversity loss due to different bioenergy policies in the European Union

(Oral)

Fulvio di Fulvio
difulvi@iiasa.ac.at

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Schlossplatz 1, 2361 Laxenburg, Austria
,
Anu Korosuo
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Schlossplatz 1, 2361 Laxenburg, Austria
,
Nicklas Forsell
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Schlossplatz 1, 2361 Laxenburg, Austria
,
Stefanie Hellweg
ETH Zürich, John-von-Neumann-Weg 9 8093 Zürich, Switzerland

DOI: 10.17011/conference/eccb2018/107473

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The demand for bioenergy is expected to increase rapidly in the EU, driven by policies aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through bioenergy. The downside of the increased use of bioenergy is the risk to biodiversity and ecosystem services, both within the EU but also outside the EU borders through indirect effects.

Our study provides a spatially explicit analysis of biodiversity losses from land use, land-use change, and forestry under three different EU bioenergy policy scenarios in the detail of NUTS2 administrative units. The study combined methodologies for biodiversity impact assessment with a global high resolution economic land use model GLOBIOM. Potential loss of global species (PSLglo) was used as an indicator for biodiversity damage, and species loss was quantified using the countryside species area-relationships model (SARs).

The Constant demand (CONST), the Baseline (BASE), and the Emission Reduction (EMIRED) scenarios were used for depicting different future biomass demands. All scenarios had similar biomass demand until 2020 but different targets afterwards, from keeping the demand for bioenergy constant (CONST) to a strong increase of bioenergy aiming to decrease GHG emissions by 80% in 2050 (EMIRED) and with the BASE scenario falling in between the other two.

The total global biodiversity loss due to EU land use and related changes in net imports was found to reach 1% in 2050 in the BASE scenario. The biodiversity impacts were found to vary only little between the scenarios but instead increase considerably over time in all scenarios, due to increased bioenergy and food demand. The damage was found to increase by 26% from year 2000 to 2050 in the BASE scenario. The difference between scenarios increased over time and in the year 2050 impacts for the EMIRED are 2% larger than in the BASE, meanwhile in the CONST scenario, they are 1.7% lower than in the BASE. The land-use induced impacts on biodiversity were amplified in southern Europe, where the ecoregions are hosting more biodiversity than in the north. In all scenarios, the relative share of indirect impacts through EU imports is expected to increase over time. Imports accounted for 15% of total impacts in the year 2000, and increased to 24-26% in 2050, meaning that relatively more damage would be outsourced by the EU in the future.

The main drivers of the direct damage for biodiversity were the increased amount of land used for perennial energy crops and the increased use of forests for biomass supply, while the indirect damage was driven by the increase of agricultural products imports. The expansion of perennial energy crops on agricultural cropland in the EU (especially in the EMIRED scenario) was found to outsource damage elsewhere, as agricultural products would then be increasingly imported from outside EU, partly from regions rich in biodiversity and hosting vulnerable species.

This work is part of the Sumforest project Future BioEcon.

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INTRO:
A comparative study on EU bioeconomy policies that looks at consequences of various policy options to global species diversity.
MERITS:
A politically very relevant topic, implemented with a very wide geographical scale (EU-wide policies, global impacts). The results (very minor differences between the scenarios but large losses in the course of time) sound very interesting.
CRITIQUE:
1. I would have wanted to see a bit more information on how Global biodiversity losses were quantified, as this is a crucial part of the study. I wondered if Potential loss of global species (PSLglo) is some standard measure (thus the acronym?), but I couldn't find it with Google/Google Scholar.

2. No mention of why all scenarios increased damage in the course of time. Was this caused by projected population size or consumption increases, or climate change models?
DISCUSSION:
I am definitely interested in hearing this talk.

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INTRO:
This abstract describes a EU level approach to understanding the impacts of migrating to a bioeconomy (focusing on renewable resources vs. fossil fuels). Three scenarios are developed to describe the change of demand of bioenergy over a period of 50 years (2000 until 2050?). In all scenarios there is dramatic threats to biodiversity, but over time there is signficant differences between the scenarios.
MERITS:
The modelling approach is spatially explicit, and the authors have indicated a difference in the N Europe and S Europe. I'm unsure what the exact spatial scale is (either I've missed it, or it wasn't mentioned). I thought that the abstract is very well written and presents the concepts well.
CRITIQUE:
My only critique is that I'm unsure what the spatial scale is. I think this is simply that the authors didn't mention what scale they were operating on.
DISCUSSION:
I think that this will make a nice presentation.

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INTRO:
This study analyses the effects of three different EU bioenergy policy scenarios on biodiversity by combining a global high resolution economic land use model and biodiversity impact assessment. The study shows that EU bioenergy policies can cause negative effects on biodiversity, and the effects increase with time. In addition, the study finds that biodiversity loss will be outsourced by the EU in the future because of pellet imports to the EU.
MERITS:
The merit of this study is that the authors model both spatial and temporal dynamics. This study forecasts the effect of different policies in time and space in an unique way.
CRITIQUE:
As this an abstract for conference session, I see no larger problems with this manuscript. I would be very interested to hear more about this study.
DISCUSSION:
This study tackles the interlinkages of two really topical environmental concerns: climate change mitigation with bioenergy and biodiversity loss. Exploring the interlinkages of these two with a global economic land use model and linked biodiversity impact assessment tools advances the scientific understanding of the system dynamics. This in turn may help the society to avoid decisions, which might become tomorrow's problems.

It my pleasure to recommend this manuscript to be part of the conference.

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INTRO:
This study analyses the impacts of land use changes and increased harvests resulting from demand for wood and other renewable energy products resulting from different bioenergy policy scenarios on global biodiversity. The effect of biodiversity is estimated based on the percentage change in biodiversity using PSLglo indicator and a species-area relationship model.
MERITS:
This study is well designed and very timely. Eventhough the difference in biodiversity loss is very little among the scenarios, the extent of damage is increasing with time with more stringent bioenergy policies.
CRITIQUE:
GLOBIOM's is a global level model and when downscaling the model output to analyze the change in population size, colonization events (for analyzing the biodiversity in species-area relationship model) can lead to errors. Or if the species-area relationship model is upscaled to national or regional level it can also lead to uncertaintes. It will be interesting how the authors account for these kind of uncertainties in this study.
DISCUSSION:
I actually did not understand the difference between CONST scenario and BASE scenario. What is the difference between the storyline between CONST and BASE after 2020? I am very interested to heart this talk during the conference.

Spatially explicit analysis of biodiversity loss due to different bioenergy policies in the European Union

Date:2018/06/13

Time:15:30

Room:A2 Wivi

Spatially explicit analysis of biodiversity loss due to different bioenergy policies in the European Union

(Oral)

SEE PEER REVIEW

SEE PEER REVIEW

Date:
2018/06/13

Time:
15:30

Room:
A2 Wivi