Global land use accounting (GLUA)

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2 Table of Contents Global land use accounting (GLUA)...1/4 1 Introduction: Global Land Use Accounting (GLUA)...1/4 2 Methodology of GLUA...1/4 3 Process of GLUA...1/4 4 Review of GLUA...2/4 4.1 Evaluation results of global land use accounting...2/4 4.2 Experiences with GLUA...2/4 4.3 Combinations of global land use accounting with other tools...3/4 4.4 Strengths and limitations of GLUA...3/4 4.5 Further work...3/4 4.6 References...4/4 i

3 Philipp Schepelmann 1 Introduction: Global Land Use Accounting (GLUA) The use of the natural resource land touches a variety of territorial and spatial aspects. Land use depends on specific properties of different ecosystems, which allow various types of use such as agriculture, forestry, settlements or nature conservation. Land has a fundamental importance for economic activities although the appreciation of it in economics has decreased together with the share of the primary sector in the national production of industrialised societies (Immler 1989). The multi functionality of land allows different forms of land use. Currently, the European land is used to 43% by agriculture, 36% by forestry and 17% by other uses (including settlements and infrastructure). The different land use types are often in competition. On the global level a growing population requires more land for food production but also for settlements and infrastructure. Increasing industrial development will additionally require land for infrastructures. In Europe population sizes are more or less stagnating on a rather high level. Nevertheless, urban structures continue to sprawl. Changes in agricultural policy (extensification, energy crops etc.) can contribute to increase further demand for land as can a future shift to supply of raw materials on a renewable basis (Bringezu and Steger 2005). Land use and land cover accounts are one of the core natural resource accounts in the System of Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounts (SEEA) of the United Nations (United Nations 2001). For land use accounting the use of input output analysis is increasingly recognized (Hubacek and Giljum 2003). 2 Methodology of GLUA Global Land Use Accounting is closely related to Economy wide Material Flow Analysis (EMFA). While EMFA describes mass flows without regarding the related land area (Bringezu et al. 2003), there is a link between mass flows and land use, because in particular the production of biomass requires land. Therefore, any mass flows related to food production or large parts of the renewable resources (e.g. biofuels, biomaterials) are linked to land use. First steps towards Global Land Use Accounting were taken in the Eurostat guide on "Economy wide material flow accounts and derived indicators" (Eurostat 2001). The guide proposes assembling trade balances for land use (in hectares) as an additional resource use indicator in international trade. In order to provide a more comprehensive picture it seems to be useful to quantify the mass flow related land use. The approach of a Global Land Use Accounting (GLUA) considers total resource flows and land use associated with the activities of a national economy, region or product chain. The method measures resource use on a life cycle wide basis, i.e. also transregional resource requirements. The land based trade balance illustrates the land area used by export production abroad as well as the domestic land area needed to produce the goods and services exported to the rest of the world or consumed domestically.thus, it allows to detect the shift of environmental burden between regions, e.g. by global trade relations. 3 Process of GLUA The following description provides an overview of steps in the accounting for the land use related to the domestic production and consumption of agricultural commodities in the EU, taking its foreign trade of agricultural commodities into account (see Schütz 2003). In order to analyse the land use for imports and exports of agricultural commodities, their extent and distribution is to be analysed, broken down by material categories (e.g. coffee, fruits, vegetables, fibres) and 1/4

4 origins (e.g. economic regions, country groupings, national economies). For the EU the database of FAOSTAT for yields of agricultural primary commodities can be used to account for land use. This can be combined with the physical imports and exports data from the Eurostat COMEXT database. In addition, land use coefficients for agricultural plant products (e.g. milling products) and agricultural animal products (e.g. meat) available in the database of the Wuppertal Institute have been applied to derive total land use estimates associated with all imported and exported agricultural commodities. In line with the commodities differentiated by the Eurostat guide (Eurostat 2001) the land use of primary crops have to be separated from those of plant products (manufactures from plants harvested like beer), and animal products (of agricultural origin like cow milk). Variations of land requirements for agricultural imports, exports and the resulting balances over time and by regional distribution have to be accounted for in order to evaluate the magnitude and relative change of the dependency of the examined economy on foreign agricultural land resources and its role in providing agricultural land by exports to other regions. Furthermore, the land use required for domestic consumption of agricultural products in the examined economy is derived from domestically available agricultural land plus land use associated with imports minus land use associated with exports. The results show whether and to which extent the examined economy requires more or less land for its consumption than available within the region. Furthermore, the absolute level of land use per capita of the examined economy demonstrates how much this requirement is above or below the global average of available agricultural land use. This information can be used as a starting point for scenario building of future agricultural land availability and requirements by the economy within the global framework. 4 Review of GLUA 4.1 Evaluation results of global land use accounting Global Land Use Accounting (GLUA) provides information for evaluation of policy processes, operational aspects, crosscutting sustainability aspects, coverage of impacts and other relevant evaluation aspects. Especially for biomass production a quantification of land use is pivotal for estimating ecological impacts on that surface. For assessing the ecological impacts of biomass production not only domestic land use can be important, but also land use abroad. Especially with regard to ecologically sensitive areas (e.g. tropical areas) this can have important implications for biodiversity. Global biomass trade also affects a number of economic and social issues. Especially in developing countries large parts of the population depend economically on a number of ecosystem functions which can be threatened, if land is increasingly used for cash crop production. This goes along with a number of social risks depending on issues like land ownership, subsistence farming and accumulation of added value drawn from farming. 4.2 Experiences with GLUA In the mid 1990ies there have been attemps to integrate assessments of land use and material flows. Dealing with the question, how much land is required for German consumption of agricultural commodities, the study Zukunftsfähiges Deutschland [Sustainable Germany] (BUND and Misereor 1996) quantifies Germany s mass flow related domestic and foreign land use. Wuppertal Institute s study Der ökologische Rucksack des Ruhrgebiets [The ecological rucksack of the Ruhr area] (Bringezu and Schütz 1996) accounts for the Ruhr area s land requirements inside and outside the region. Younger studies on the economy wide land use of Germany (Schütz 2003) and on land use for imports, exports and domestic consumption of agricultural commodities of the EU 15 (Schütz et al. 2003; Steger 2004, Bringezu and Steger 2005) provide a further developed methodology respectively a wider framework for analysis. Bringezu and Steger 2005) found that the global land use of the EU 15 due to the consumption of agricultural goods was 4310 m2/cap in 2000, which is 18 % larger than the domestic agricultural area used. Global per capita land use of the EU 15 exceeded the worldwide average of high intensity farming area by 72 %. Until 2030, the global availability of arable land and land for permanent cultures is expected to decline to 1900 m2/cap. Without changes in agricultural production and consumption patterns, additional land use 2/4

5 requirements for biofuels and other biomass for non food purposes will increase the foreign proportion of net global land use of the EU 15, and thus the distance from an equitable share of global land use. This will contribute to increased pressure to convert natural and nature like ecosystems to intensive farming area in regions of the world with weak governance. Three quarters of global land use of the EU 15 is used for animal and dairy production. Reducing this share to levels beneficial for nutritional health and the environment in intensive farming regions, would provide room for non food biomass production. 4.3 Combinations of global land use accounting with other tools GLUA is closely related to the accounting of economy wide MFA and derived indicators as described under 3. Despite some similarities to the Ecological Footprint, GLUA follows a different approach. While the Ecological Footprint estimates the virtual land use under the premise of certain selected sustainable conditions, GLUA aims at accounting for the actual land use, including the land rucksack. 4.4 Strengths and limitations of GLUA GLUA so far only quantifies global land use by its spatial extend. The quality of land use can hardly be evaluated by the current GLUA methodology.the proper determination of the quality of an impact may depend on a further developed methodology for taking the effects of certain typles of land use into account. The connection of mass based indicators with a land based indicator could provide a comprehensive picture of physical implications of production and consumption patterns. The tool allows to detect the shift of generic environmental burden related to agricultural land use between regions. Complementary to economic balancing (national accounting) or mass balancing (e.g. Economy wide Material Flow Analysis ) GLUA describes the land balance of an economy, whether it depends on additional land requirements abroad or not. It offers the opportunity to reveal possible inequalities in distributions of land use per capita. Hence, the results allow the evaluation in terms of sustainability. The estimation of agricultural commodities land requirement reveals the actual amount of land area necessary to maintain the present way of agricultural production and domestic consumption. It may be adequate to formulate targets of a sustainable land use (hectares per capita). GLUA (like Economy wide Material Flow Analysis ) has the potential may be able to cover different spatial scales from local to global. 4.5 Further work The amount of land necessary for growing a certain crop depends on regional or local conditions, such as soil fertility, climate, use of fertilizer and pesticides etc. These different conditions have to be taken into account when calculating with coefficients for hectar productivity. For instance the average yield of maize in Western Europe is different from yields in South America. Large land requrirements are not necessarily more harmful to the environment than small land requirements. Thus, the quality of land use and the quality of agricultural production has to be considered, too. There is still a lack of data available on such parameters for agricultural production on the national, regional and local level, which are, however, essential for further analysis and evaluation of qualitative aspects of global land use by an economy. The results from (extended) GLUA should be used for scenario building of future agricultural land availability and requirements by the economy within the global framework. 3/4

6 4.6 References Bringezu, S. and H. Schütz (1996), Der ökologische Rucksack des Ruhrgebiets Ein Vergleich mit Nordrhein Westfalen und der Bundesrepublik Deutschland [The ecological rucksack of the Ruhr area A comparison with North Rine Westphalia and the Federal Republic of Germany], Wuppertal Paper No. 61, Wuppertal. Bringezu, S., H. Schütz and S. Moll (2003), Rationale for and Interpretion of Economy Wide Material Flow Analysis and Derived Indicators, Journal of Industrial Ecology 7(2), Bringezu, S. and S. Steger (2005), Biofuels and Competition for Global Land Use, Global Issue Papers of Heinrich Böll Foundation, Proceedings of the Workshop "Bio in den Tank: Chancen Risiken Nebenwirkungen (Bio into the tank: Chances Risks Side Effects)", Fachtagung der Heinrich Böll Stiftung und des European Climate Forum , Berlin Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND) and Misereor (eds.), Zukunftsfähiges Deutschland, ein Beitrag zu einer global nachhaltigen Entwicklung [Sustainable Germany, contribution towards a global sustainable development], study of the Wuppertal Institute, Basel, Bonn, Berlin: Birkäuser. Eurostat (Statistical Office of the European Communities) (2001), Economy wide material flow accounts and derived indicators. A methodological guide, Luxembourg. product/en?catalogue=eurostat&product=ks _ Hubacek and Giljum (2003), Applying physical input output analysis to estimate land appropriation (ecological footprints) of international trade activities, Ecological economics 44, Immler, H. (1989): Natur in der ökonoischen Theorie. Wiesbaden. Moll, S., J. Acosta and A. Villanueva (2004), Environmental implications of resource use insights from input output analyses, European Environment Agency, Copenhagen. Schütz, H., S. Moll and S. Steger (2003), Economy wide material flow accounts, foreign trade analysis, and derived indicators for the EU, Resource use and material flow accounts, Draft final Report for the Commission of the European Communities, DG Eurostat. Steger, S. (2004) (in print), Der Flächenrucksack des europäischen Außenhandels mit Agrargütern [The land rucksack of the European foreign trade with agricultural commodities], in Welche Globalisierung ist zukunftsfähig? [What globalisation is sustainable?], Wuppertal Institute. United Nations (2001), System of environmental and Economic Accounting, SEEA Revision, New York: United Nations. 4/4