Key determinants of global land-use projections

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 10; no. 1; pp. 2166 - 10
• Main Authors: Stehfest, Elke, van Zeist, Willem-Jan, Valin, Hugo, Havlik, Petr, Popp, Alexander, Kyle, Page, Tabeau, Andrzej, Mason-D’Croz, Daniel, Hasegawa, Tomoko, Bodirsky, Benjamin L., Calvin, Katherine, Doelman, Jonathan C., Fujimori, Shinichiro, Humpenöder, Florian, Lotze-Campen, Hermann, van Meijl, Hans, Wiebe, Keith
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 15.05.2019; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 704/172/4081; 704/844/2787; 704/844/682; Agricultural land; Agricultural production; Agronomy; Climate-change mitigation; Determinants; Development strategies; Economic analysis; Economics; Empirical analysis; Environmental impact; ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; Food availability; Food security; Heterogeneity; Humanities and Social Sciences; Internationaal Beleid; International Policy; Land use; LEI Internationaal Beleid; LEI International Policy; LEI Programmamanagement; multidisciplinary; open climate campaign; Pasture; Population growth; Programmamanagement; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Sensitivity; Socioeconomic scenarios; Socioeconomics; Sustainable development
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09945-w

Land use is at the core of various sustainable development goals. Long-term climate foresight studies have structured their recent analyses around five socio-economic pathways (SSPs), with consistent storylines of future macroeconomic and societal developments; however, model quantification of these scenarios shows substantial heterogeneity in land-use projections. Here we build on a recently developed sensitivity approach to identify how future land use depends on six distinct socio-economic drivers (population, wealth, consumption preferences, agricultural productivity, land-use regulation, and trade) and their interactions. Spread across models arises mostly from diverging sensitivities to long-term drivers and from various representations of land-use regulation and trade, calling for reconciliation efforts and more empirical research. Most influential determinants for future cropland and pasture extent are population and agricultural efficiency. Furthermore, land-use regulation and consumption changes can play a key role in reducing both land use and food-security risks, and need to be central elements in sustainable development strategies. There lacks model comparison of global land use change projections. Here the authors explored how different long-term drivers determine land use and food availability projections and they showed that the key determinants population growth and improvements in agricultural efficiency.