A study suggests that the biodiversity-related effects of land-use change for bioenergy crops may offset gains from adoption of bioenergy as a climate change mitigation strategy. Climate change, particularly in the high-emission scenarios of some global climate projections, affects biodiversity worldwide. Land-use change can also endanger biodiversity by destroying and fragmenting habitats. Previous studies have shown that land-use change and climate change can act synergistically to reduce biodiversity. Christian Hof and colleagues conducted climate-based model simulations to identify potential changes in vertebrate diversity and linked the changes to land-use change simulations, thus determining the combined impacts of climate and land-use change under low-emission and high-emission scenarios. The results suggest that under a high-emission scenario, climate change effects on biodiversity are stronger than effects of land-use changes, but under low-emission scenarios, such as those sought by the 2015 Paris Agreement, land-use change affects biodiversity to a degree that is not offset by climate change reduction, largely due to the projected expansion of bioenergy cropland. According to the authors, widespread implementation of bioenergy cropland expansion as a climate change mitigation strategy may affect vertebrate biodiversity as much as a high-emission scenario, suggesting a need for alternative mitigation strategies to reduce biodiversity impacts.
###
Article #18-07745: "Bioenergy cropland expansion may offset positive effects of climate change mitigation for global vertebrate diversity," by Christian Hof et al.
MEDIA CONTACT: Christian Hof, Technical University of Munich, Freising, GERMANY; tel: +498161712489; e-mail: christian.hof@tum.de
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences