Implications of land-grabbing on the ecological balance of Brazil

In the global free-market, natural resource scarcity and opportunities for preserving the local environment are fostering international purchasing of large extensions of land, mainly for agricultural use. These land transactions often involve land cover change (i.e., through deforestation) or a shift from extensive or traditional to intensive agricultural practices. In Brazil, the land appropriation by foreign investors (i.e., the so-called "land-grabbing") is affecting natural capital availability for local communities to a different extent in the very different territorial entities. At the same time, Brazilian investors are purchasing land in other countries. Ecological footprint accounting is one appropriate lens that can be employed to visualize the aggregated effect of natural capital appropriation and use. The aim of this paper is to provide a first estimate on the effect of land-grabbing on the ecological balance of Brazil through calculating the biocapacity embodied in purchased lands in the different states of Brazil. The results show that Brazil is losing between 9 to 9.3 million global hectares (on a gross basis, or a net total of 7.7 to 8.6 million of global hectares) of its biocapacity due to land-grabbing, when considering respectively a "cropland to cropland" (i.e., no land-cover change) and a "total deforestation" scenario. This represents a minimum estimate, highlighting the need for further land-grabbing data collection at the subnational scale. This analysis can be replicated for other countries of the world, adjusting their ecological balance by considering the biocapacity embodied in international transactions of land

The direct drivers of recent global anthropogenic biodiversity loss

Effective policies to halt biodiversity loss require knowing which anthropogenic drivers are the most important direct causes. Whereas previous knowledge has been limited in scope and rigor, here we statistically synthesize empirical comparisons of recent driver impacts found through a wide-ranging review. We show that land/sea use change has been the dominant direct driver of recent biodiversity loss worldwide. Direct exploitation of natural resources ranks second and pollution third; climate change and invasive alien species have been significantly less important than the top two drivers. The oceans, where direct exploitation and climate change dominate, have a different driver hierarchy from land and fresh water. It also varies among types of biodiversity indicators. For example, climate change is a more important driver of community composition change than of changes in species populations. Stopping global biodiversity loss requires policies and actions to tackle all the major drivers and their interactions, not some of them in isolation.Fil: Jaureguiberry, Pedro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; ArgentinaFil: Titeux, Nicolas. German Centre For Integrative Biodiversity Research (idiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig; Alemania. Luxembourg Institute Of Science And Technology; Luxemburgo. Helmholtz Zentrum Für Umweltforschung; AlemaniaFil: Wiemers, Martin. Helmholtz Zentrum Für Umweltforschung; Alemania. Senckenberg Gesellschaft Für Naturforschung; AlemaniaFil: Bowler, Diana E.. German Centre For Integrative Biodiversity Research (idiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig; Alemania. Universitat Jena; Alemania. Helmholtz Zentrum Für Umweltforschung; AlemaniaFil: Coscieme, Luca. Hot Or Cool Institute; AlemaniaFil: Golden, Abigail S.. University of Washington; Estados Unidos. German Centre For Integrative Biodiversity Research (idiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig; Alemania. Department Of Marine And Coastal Sciences; Estados UnidosFil: Guerra, Carlos A.. German Centre For Integrative Biodiversity Research (idiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig; Alemania. Martin Luther University Halle Wittenberg; AlemaniaFil: Jacob, Ute. Universität Oldenburg; Alemania. Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum Für Polar- Und Meeresforschung; AlemaniaFil: Takahashi, Yasuo. Institute For Global Environmental Strategies; JapónFil: Settele, Josef. German Centre For Integrative Biodiversity Research (idiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig; Alemania. University Of The Philippines, Los Baños; Filipinas. Helmholtz Zentrum Für Umweltforschung; AlemaniaFil: Díaz, Sandra Myrna. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; ArgentinaFil: Molnár, Zsolt. Institute Of Ecology And Botany; HungríaFil: Purvis, Andy. Imperial College London; Reino Unido. Natural History Museum; Reino Unid

Implications of Land-Grabbing on the Ecological Balance of Brazil

In the global free-market, natural resource scarcity and opportunities for preserving the local environment are fostering international purchasing of large extensions of land, mainly for agricultural use. These land transactions often involve land cover change (i.e., through deforestation) or a shift from extensive or traditional to intensive agricultural practices. In Brazil, the land appropriation by foreign investors (i.e., the so-called “land-grabbing”) is affecting natural capital availability for local communities to a different extent in the very different territorial entities. At the same time, Brazilian investors are purchasing land in other countries. Ecological footprint accounting is one appropriate lens that can be employed to visualize the aggregated effect of natural capital appropriation and use. The aim of this paper is to provide a first estimate on the effect of land-grabbing on the ecological balance of Brazil through calculating the biocapacity embodied in purchased lands in the different states of Brazil. The results show that Brazil is losing between 9 to 9.3 million global hectares (on a gross basis, or a net total of 7.7 to 8.6 million of global hectares) of its biocapacity due to land-grabbing, when considering respectively a “cropland to cropland” (i.e., no land-cover change) and a “total deforestation” scenario. This represents a minimum estimate, highlighting the need for further land-grabbing data collection at the subnational scale. This analysis can be replicated for other countries of the world, adjusting their ecological balance by considering the biocapacity embodied in international transactions of land

From gross domestic product to wellbeing : how alternative indicators can help connect the new economy with the sustainable development goals

In a 2014 issue of Nature, members of our research group called for abandoning the gross domestic product as the key indicator in economic policymaking. In this new article, we argue that a new post–gross domestic product economy focusing on wellbeing rather than material output is already emerging in the Anthropocene, thanks to the convergence of policy reforms and economic shifts. At the policy level, the Sustainable Development Goals require policymakers to protect ecosystems, promote greater equality, and focus on long-term equitable development. At the economy level, the provision of services has outpaced industrial production as the key driver of prosperity, with innovative business models optimizing the match between supply and demand and giving rise to a burgeoning “sharing economy”, which produces value to people while reducing output and costs. The economic transformation already underway is, however, delayed by an obsolete system of measurement of economic performance still dominated by the gross domestic product–based national accounts, which rewards the incumbent and disincentives the new. We show that a different approach to measuring wellbeing and prosperity is the “missing link” we need to connect recent evolutions in policy and the economy with a view to activating a sustainable development paradigm for a good Anthropocene.L.C. was funded by an IRC/Marie Skłodowska-Curie CAROLINE Postdoctoral Fellowship (IRC-CLNE/2017/567).https://journals.sagepub.com/home/anrhj2019Political Science

Ecosystem services as a counterpart of emergy flows to ecosystems

3noreservedA generic input-state-output scheme has been used to represent ecosystem dynamics. Systemic approaches to ecosystems use functions that are based either on inputs, state or outputs of the system. Some examples of approaches that use a combination of functions have been recently proposed. For example the use of eco-exergy to emergy flow can be seen as a mixed input-state approach; more recently, to connect the state to the output of the ecosystem, the relation of eco-exergy and ecosystems services has been proposed. This paper studies the link between the useful output of an ecosystems and its input through the relation between ecosystem services and emergy flow, in a kind of grey/black box scheme (i.e., without considering the state and the structure of the ecosystem). No direct connection between the two concepts can be determined, but identifying and quantifying the emergy flows feeding an ecosystem and the services to humans coming from them facilitate the sustainable conservation of Nature and its functions. Furthermore, this input-output relation can be established in general by calculating the ratio of the value of the ecosystem services to the emergy flow that supports the system. In particular, the ratio of the world ecosystem services to the emergy flow supporting the entire biosphere has been calculated showing that, at least at the global level, Nature is more efficacious in producing " money" (in form of ecosystem services) than economic systems (e.g., national economies and their GDP). © 2011 Elsevier B.V.mixedPULSELLI, F. M. ; COSCIEME, L.; BASTIANONI, S.Pulselli, F. M.; Coscieme, L.; Bastianoni, S

The input-state-output model and related indicators to investigate the relationships among environment, society and economy

Economic systems can be studied as thermodynamic open systems that rely upon inputs of energy and materials, processed through human labor and a structured organization, and eventually transformed into useful outputs (i.e., goods and services). In this vein, a generic input-state-output model can be used to represent the relations among environment, society, and economy as well as their dynamics. This approach, that implies the use of holistic and systemic approaches, allows the description and understanding of the evolution of the level of sustainability of national economies through the use of three different metrics computed for world countries in time-series: emergy flow as input-based indicator, Gini index of income distribution as a state descriptor, and gross domestic product as a measure of outputs produced by the economic system. This whole framework depicts a synthetic representation of the environmental, social, and economic dimensions that characterize national systems. It aims at being highly informative to better understand complex relationships between quality and amount of energy and resources used, equity in income distribution, and the overall value of economic production

Renewable Energy Equivalent Footprint (REEF): A Method for Envisioning a Sustainable Energy Future

We present an alternative approach to estimating the spatial footprint of energy consumption, as this represents a major fraction of the ecological footprint (EF). Rather than depicting the current lack of sustainability that comes from estimating a footprint based on uptake of carbon emissions (the method used in EF accounting), our proposed “Renewable Energy Equivalent Footprint” (REEF) instead depicts a hypothetical world in which the electricity and fuel demands are met entirely from renewable energy. The analysis shows that current human energy demands could theoretically be met by renewable energy and remain within the biocapacity of one planet. However, with current technology there is no margin to leave any biocapacity for nature, leading to the investigation of two additional scenarios: (1) radical electrification of the energy supply, assuming 75% of final energy demand can be met with electricity, and (2) adopting technology in which electricity is used to convert atmospheric gases into synthetic fuel. The REEF demonstrates that a sustainable and desirable future powered by renewable energy: (i) may be possible, depending on the worldwide adoption of consumption patterns typical of several key exemplar countries; (ii) is highly dependent on major future technological development, namely electrification and synthetic fuels; and (iii) is still likely to require appropriation of a substantial, albeit hopefully sustainable, fraction of the world’s forest area

Imputing missing data in non-renewable empower time series from night-time lights observations

Emergy is an environmental accounting tool, with a specific set of indicators, that proved to be highly informative for sustainability assessment of national economies. The empower, defined as emergy per unit time, is a measure of the overall flow of resources used by a system in order to support its functioning. Continuous time-series of empower are not available for most of the world countries, due to the large amount of data needed for its calculation year by year. In this paper, we aim at filling this gap by means of a model that facilitates reconstruction of continuous time series of the non-renewable component of empower for a set of 57 countries of the world from 1995 to 2012. The reconstruction is based on a 3 year global emergy dataset and on the acknowledged relationships between the use of non-renewables, satellite observed artificial lights emitted at night, and Gross Domestic Product. Results show that this method provides accurate estimations of non-renewable empower at the country scale. The estimation model can be extended onward and backward in time and replicated for more countries, also using higher-resolution satellite imageries newly available. Besides representing an important advancement in emergy theory, this information is helpful for monitoring progresses toward Sustainable Development and energy use international goals

The needs of sustainability: The overarching contribution of systems approach

The need to define sustainability and identify meaning and scientific foundations of the concept has been compelling during the last decades. Systems approach has been largely contributing to describe the reality in which we live and understand how to measure the progress of human action towards sustainable development. Professor Sven Erik Jørgensen directly and indirectly stimulated scientific advancements in the field of sustainability definition and evaluation. His work, especially focussing on the wide view of systems sciences, of which he has always been one leading promoter, was also interestingly devoted to study the relationships between human behaviour, society, policy, education and the environment at the global level. Inspired by this view, we present and discuss a list of aspects that can be crucial in the attempt of evaluating the sustainability/unsustainability of our development models, and reflecting the multidimensional and interconnected nature of the concept. In particular, we focus on the global dimension of sustainability; the need of holistic approach, that considers relations within and among different systems at different scales; the use of intensive and/or extensive indicators for investigating sustainability; and, in more practical terms, the need of data and knowledge to feed evaluation tools. The focus on these needs will contribute to a better understanding and diffusion of the concept of sustainability under a systems perspective

Evaluating dynamics of national economies through cluster analysis within the input-state-output sustainability framework

In this paper a cluster analysis is applied to an input-state-output indicator framework that represents the interconnection of the three aspects of sustainability, namely environmental, social and economic. This framework is a useful and comprehensive tool for assessing country performances over time and improving guidelines for the classification of countries under a sustainability perspective. The method enables identification of trends and traps that characterize the evolution of countries over time. The analysis is performed for 83 countries in 2000 and 2008 in order to observe system behaviour and development patterns