Over a quarter of existing forests worldwide, 320 million hectares, could become agriculturally productive by the end of the century due to the effects of climate change, with potentially grave impacts on biodiversity, a paper said on Thursday.
The study, led by researchers at the University of Cambridge and published in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that 90% of forestry land that will become suitable for farming by 2100 is in the US, Canada, China, and Russia, and is largely being used for wood production.
As climate change forces agriculture to move northwards towards forested regions, it will increasingly compete with the timber sector for land. This could then shift timber production deeper into untouched forests, researchers said.
“A major environmental risk of increasing competition for land between farming and forestry is that wood production moves into remaining areas of primary forest within the tropics or boreal zones,” said David Edwards, professor of plant ecology in the University of Cambridge and senior author of the study.
“These are the epicentres of remaining global wilderness and untouched tropical forests are the most biodiverse places on Earth. Preventing further expansion is critical.”
Researchers estimated that Russia would make up the largest share of timber-producing areas at risk of being converted to agricultural lands, as conditions are set to become favourable for potato, soy, and wheat farming.
In addition to climate change, the expansion of farmed lands would be fuelled by the increasing global food demand.
MINIMISING LAND CONFLICT
“To minimise future land conflict between timber and agricultural production, it is crucial that increased agricultural outputs are predominantly achieved by improving efficiencies within the global food production system,” said the study.
“Beyond bending the emissions curve as early in the 21st century as possible, intensifying and optimising current agricultural and timber-production systems will be critical for avoiding future land conflict and forestry expansion into natural land cover.”
The conversion of natural ecosystems for agriculture is regarded as the primary driver of land-related biodiversity impacts, accounting for almost 75% of them, according to the UN Environmental Programme.
A separate study, led by researchers at non-profit The Nature Conservancy and published last month in the journal Scientific Data, estimated that over 460 mln ha of the world’s intact natural land is at risk of being converted into other uses, such as agriculture.
Around 420 mln ha of forest have already been lost through conversion to other land uses since 1990.
Land conversion for crop production and other anthropogenic activities also results in a large loss of soil organic carbon, with potential implications for the voluntary carbon market.
By Sergio Colombo – sergio@carbon-pulse.com
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