What is the challenge?
It is now widely recognized that natural resource use in many developing countries, from crop production to deforestation, is responsible for the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions. We also know that in many countries, it is the agriculture and forestry sectors—not industry or transport—that provide low-cost mitigation opportunities. As countries experience economic growth, they are in a favorable position to adopt development pathways and production practices characterized by low Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. The main goal of this project is to provide an analysis of alternative development pathways in agriculture and forestry so that countries can choose among a portfolio of development strategies that weigh emissions reductions against possible tradeoffs in terms of agricultural output and revenues.
Key research questions
- Is it possible to generate sufficiently reliable baseline projections for changes in land use, including changes in the mix of crops grown, and related changes in carbon stocks and GHG emissions?
- Can emission reduction policies with effects on land use be evaluated and compared with respect to their effects on GHG emissions but also on production?
- How can this information be summarized and provided to governments and stakeholders in ways that informs the decision making process?
Basic information about the activity
The Low Emission Development Strategies project identified four countries as targets for this modeling exercise: Vietnam, Bangladesh, Colombia, and Zambia.
The International Food Policy Research Institute's (IFPRI) International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT) modeling suite provides the organizing environment for the country analytical work and is augmented by the implementation of a model of land use choices. This modeling methodology combines and reconciles the limited spatial resolution of macro-level economic models that operate through equilibrium-driven relationships at a subnational or national level with detailed models of biophysical processes at high spatial resolution. In particular, the approach proposed includes the use of the following:
- A spatially-explicit model of land use choices to determine the possible effects of future changes in the drivers of land use choices;
- the core IMPACT model, a global partial equilibrium agriculture model that allows policy and agricultural productivity investment simulations;
- the DeNitrification - DeComposition crop model (DNDC, Li, 2007) that estimates yields with varying crop genetic productivity shifters, management systems and climate change scenarios and GHG emissions.
The use of this modeling environment provides detailed country-level results embedded in a framework consistent with global outcomes. Moreover, by using of the most updated knowledge on GHG emissions generated by existing farming practices and by the adoption of alternative technologies, it is possible to simulate the effects of alternative agricultural and natural resources policies and their GHG emission profiles.
Collaborators
- Vietnam: Institute for Agricultural Environment (IAE), National Institute of Agricultural Planning and Projection (NIAPP), World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF)
- Bangladesh: Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS)
- Colombia: International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT)
- Zambia: Development Data
Outputs
- Li, M., De Pinto, A., Ulimwengu, J., You, L., Robertson, R.,: "Modeling Land-use Allocation with Mixed-level Data: An Econometric Analysis for the Democratic Republic of the Congo." Poster 2011.
- Li, M., De Pinto, A., Ulimwengu, J., You, L., Robertson, R.,: Impacts of Road Expansion on Deforestation and Biological Carbon Loss in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Environmental and Resource Economics (2014)
Contact
Alex De Pinto: a.depinto@cgiar.org
This project is led by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
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