Modelling sustainable intensification in Brazilian agriculture
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Date
10/07/2017Author
De Oliveira Silva, Rafael
Metadata
Abstract
At the United Nations Framework Conference on Climate Change COP15 (2009) Brazil
presented ambitious commitments or Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs),
to reduce greenhouse gases emissions (GHGs) mitigation by 2020. At COP21 (2015), the
country presented new commitments and a framework to achieve further mitigation targets by
2030 as so-called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). Both NAMAs and
INDCs focus on the land use change and agricultural sectors, but the INDCs include a
commitment of zero illegal deforestation in the Amazon by 2030. This research focuses on
the contribution of the livestock sector to reducing GHGs through the adoption of sustainable
intensification measures. A detailed linear programming model, called Economic Analysis of
Greenhouse Gases for Livestock Emissions (EAGGLE), of beef production was developed to
evaluate environmental trade-offs. The modelling encompasses pasture degradation and
recovery processes, animal and deforestation emissions, soil organic carbon dynamics and
upstream life-cycle inventory. The model was parameterized for the Brazilian Cerrado,
Amazon and Atlantic Forest biomes and further developed for farm-scale and regional-scale
analysis. Different versions of the EAGGLE model was used to: (i) Evaluate the GHG
mitigation potential and economic benefit of optimizing pasture management through the
partitioning of initially uniform pasture area; (ii) to define abatement potential and cost-effectiveness
of key mitigation measures applicable to the Brazilian Cerrado; (ii) to
demonstrate the extent of cost-effective mitigation that can be delivered by the livestock
sector as part of INDCs, and to show a result that underpins the national INDC target of zero
deforestation; and (iv) to evaluate the consequences of reducing (or increasing) beef
production on GHGs in the Cerrado. Counter-intuitively, a sensitivity analysis shows that
reducing beef consumption could lead to higher GHG emissions, while increasing production
could reduce total GHGs if livestock is decoupled from deforestation.