TY - JOUR
T1 - The Contribution of Agriculture, Forestry and other Land Use activities to Global Warming, 1990-2012
AU - Tubiello, Francesco N.
AU - Salvatore, Mirella
AU - F. Ferrara, Alessandro
AU - House, Joanna Isobel
AU - Federici, Sandro
AU - Rossi, Simone
AU - Biancalani, Riccardo
AU - D. Condor Golec, Rocio
AU - Jacobs, Heather
AU - Flammini, Alessandro
AU - Prosperi, Paolo
AU - Cardenas-Galindo, Paola
AU - Schmidhuber, Josef
AU - Sanz Sanchez, Maria J.
AU - Srivastava, Nalin
AU - Smith, Pete
N1 - Date of Acceptance: 16/12/2014
PY - 2015/7/1
Y1 - 2015/7/1
N2 - We refine the information available through the IPCC AR5 with regard to
recent trends in global GHG emissions from agriculture, forestry and
other land uses (AFOLU), including global emission updates to 2012.
Using all three available AFOLU datasets employed for analysis in the
IPCC AR5, rather than just one as done in the IPCC AR5 WGIII Summary for
Policy Makers, our analyses point to a down-revision of global AFOLU
shares of total anthropogenic emissions, while providing important
additional information on subsectoral trends. Our findings confirm that
the share of AFOLU emissions to the anthropogenic total declined over
time. They indicate a decadal average of 28.7 ± 1.5% in the 1990s and
23.6 ± 2.1% in the 2000s and an annual value of 21.2 ± 1.5% in 2010. The
IPCC AR5 had indicated a 24% share in 2010. In contrast to previous
decades, when emissions from land use (land use, land use change and forestry, including deforestation) were significantly larger than those from agriculture
(crop and livestock production), in 2010 agriculture was the larger
component, contributing 11.2 ± 0.4% of total GHG emissions, compared to
10.0 ± 1.2% of the land use sector. Deforestation was responsible for
only 8% of total anthropogenic emissions in 2010, compared to 12% in the
1990s. Since 2010, the last year assessed by the IPCC AR5, new FAO
estimates indicate that land use emissions have remained stable, at
about 4.8 Gt CO2 eq yr−1 in 2012. Emissions minus removals have also remained stable, at 3.2 Gt CO2 eq yr−1
in 2012. By contrast, agriculture emissions have continued to grow, at
roughly 1% annually, and remained larger than the land use sector,
reaching 5.4 Gt CO2 eq yr−1 in 2012. These results
are useful to further inform the current climate policy debate on land
use, suggesting that more efforts and resources should be directed to
further explore options for mitigation in agriculture, much in line with
the large efforts devoted to REDD+ in the past decade.
AB - We refine the information available through the IPCC AR5 with regard to
recent trends in global GHG emissions from agriculture, forestry and
other land uses (AFOLU), including global emission updates to 2012.
Using all three available AFOLU datasets employed for analysis in the
IPCC AR5, rather than just one as done in the IPCC AR5 WGIII Summary for
Policy Makers, our analyses point to a down-revision of global AFOLU
shares of total anthropogenic emissions, while providing important
additional information on subsectoral trends. Our findings confirm that
the share of AFOLU emissions to the anthropogenic total declined over
time. They indicate a decadal average of 28.7 ± 1.5% in the 1990s and
23.6 ± 2.1% in the 2000s and an annual value of 21.2 ± 1.5% in 2010. The
IPCC AR5 had indicated a 24% share in 2010. In contrast to previous
decades, when emissions from land use (land use, land use change and forestry, including deforestation) were significantly larger than those from agriculture
(crop and livestock production), in 2010 agriculture was the larger
component, contributing 11.2 ± 0.4% of total GHG emissions, compared to
10.0 ± 1.2% of the land use sector. Deforestation was responsible for
only 8% of total anthropogenic emissions in 2010, compared to 12% in the
1990s. Since 2010, the last year assessed by the IPCC AR5, new FAO
estimates indicate that land use emissions have remained stable, at
about 4.8 Gt CO2 eq yr−1 in 2012. Emissions minus removals have also remained stable, at 3.2 Gt CO2 eq yr−1
in 2012. By contrast, agriculture emissions have continued to grow, at
roughly 1% annually, and remained larger than the land use sector,
reaching 5.4 Gt CO2 eq yr−1 in 2012. These results
are useful to further inform the current climate policy debate on land
use, suggesting that more efforts and resources should be directed to
further explore options for mitigation in agriculture, much in line with
the large efforts devoted to REDD+ in the past decade.
KW - AFOLU
KW - Agriculture
KW - Climate Change
KW - Emissions
KW - GHG
KW - Mitigation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84927146476&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/gcb.12865
DO - 10.1111/gcb.12865
M3 - Article (Academic Journal)
C2 - 25580828
AN - SCOPUS:84927146476
SN - 1354-1013
VL - 21
SP - 2655
EP - 2660
JO - Global Change Biology
JF - Global Change Biology
IS - 7
ER -
