Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Quantifying the global cropland footprint of the European Union's non-food bioeconomy
Stockholm University, Faculty of Science, Stockholm Resilience Centre. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-9462-0408
Show others and affiliations
Number of Authors: 72019 (English)In: Environmental Research Letters, E-ISSN 1748-9326, Vol. 14, no 4, article id 045011Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

A rapidly growing share of global agricultural areas is devoted to the production of biomass for non-food purposes. The expanding non-food bioeconomy can have far-reaching social and ecological implications; yet, the non-food sector has attained little attention in land footprint studies. This paper provides the first assessment of the global cropland footprint of non-food products of the European Union (EU), a globally important region regarding its expanding bio-based economy. We apply a novel hybrid land flow accounting model, combining the biophysical trade model LANDFLOW with the multi-regional input-output model EXIOBASE. The developed hybrid approach improves the level of product and country detail, while comprehensively covering all global supply chains from agricultural production to final consumption, including highly processed products, such as many non-food products. The results highlight the EU's role as a major processing and the biggest consuming region of cropland-based non-food products, while at the same time relying heavily on imports. Two thirds of the cropland required to satisfy the EU's non-food biomass consumption are located in other world regions, particularly in China, the US and Indonesia, giving rise to potential impacts on distant ecosystems. With almost 39% in 2010, oilseeds used to produce for example biofuels, detergents and polymers represented the dominant share of the EU's non-food cropland demand. Traditional non-food biomass uses, such as fibre crops for textiles and animal hides and skins for leather products, also contributed notably (22%). Our findings suggest that if the EU Bioeconomy Strategy is to support global sustainable development, a detailed monitoring of land use displacement and spillover effects is decisive for targeted and effective EU policy making.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2019. Vol. 14, no 4, article id 045011
Keywords [en]
bioeconomy, land footprint, non-food, multi-regional input-output, hybrid accounting, European Union
National Category
Earth and Related Environmental Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-168642DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ab07f5ISI: 000464204300001OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-168642DiVA, id: diva2:1313754
Available from: 2019-05-06 Created: 2019-05-06 Last updated: 2024-01-17Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Publisher's full text

Authority records

Häyhä, Tiina

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Häyhä, Tiina
By organisation
Stockholm Resilience Centre
In the same journal
Environmental Research Letters
Earth and Related Environmental Sciences

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 39 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf