Competing Demands on Land: Implications for Carbon Sink Enhancement and Potential of Forest Sector in Karnataka to Contribute to the INDC Forest Goal of India

The land is a critical resource that provides food for a burgeoning population of about 7 billion supports livelihoods and is important for sustainable development Growing demands for food feed fuel fiber and raw materials create local as well as remote pressures for land-use change Lambin and Meyfroidt 2011 The cascade of outcomes resulting from these demands is complicated by urbanization and globalization Barles 2010 Kissinger and Rees 2010 Climate change is an additional stress that will exacerbate the pressure on land as there is a conflict between goals related to production and those related to conservation and climate change mitigation In light of this the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations UNDP 2015 have recognized the need for integration of human development and the environment as mutually reinforcing development goal

Developing context-specific frameworks for integrated sustainability assessment of agricultural intensity change: An application for Europe

Agriculture plays a central role in achieving most Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Sustainable intensi- fication (SI) of agriculture has been proposed as a promising concept for safeguarding global food security, while simultaneously protecting the environment and promoting good quality of life. However, SI often leads to context-specific sustainability trade-offs. Operationalising SI thus needs to be supported by transparent sus- tainability assessments. In this article, we propose a general systematic approach to developing context-specific frameworks for integrated sustainability assessment of agricultural intensity change. Firstly, we specify a comprehensive system representation for analysing how changes in agricultural intensity lead to a multitude of sustainability outcomes affecting different societal groups across geographical scales. We then introduce a procedure for identifying the attributes that are relevant for assessment within particular contexts, and respective indicator metrics. Finally, we illustrate the proposed approach by developing an assessment framework for evaluating a wide range of intensification pathways in Europe. The application of the approach revealed pro- cesses and effects that are relevant for the European context but are rarely considered in SI assessments. These include farmers’ health, workers’ living conditions, cultural heritage and sense of place of rural communities, animal welfare, impacts on sectors not directly related to agriculture (e.g., tourism), shrinking and ageing of rural population and consumers’ health. The proposed approach addresses important gaps in SI assessments, and thus represents an important step forward in defining transparent procedures for sustainability assessments that can stimulate an informed debate about the operationalisation of SI and its contribution towards achieving SDGs