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To fulfill the 2030 Agenda, the complexity of sustainable development goal (SDG) interactions needs to be disentangled. However, this understanding is currently limited. We conduct a cross-sectional correlational analysis for 2016 to understand SDG interactions under the entire development spectrum. We apply several correlation methods to classify the interaction as synergy or trade-off and characterize them according to their monotony and linearity. Simultaneously, we analyze SDG interactions considering population, location, income, and regional groups. Our findings highlight that synergies always outweigh trade-offs and linear outweigh non-linear interactions. SDG 1, 5, and 6 are associated with linear synergies, SDG 3, and 7 with non-linear synergies. SDG interactions vary according to a country's income and region along with the gender, age, and location of its population. In summary, to achieve the 2030 Agenda the detected interactions and inequalities across countries need be tracked and leveraged to "leave no one behind."
Cities will play a key role in the grand challenge of nourishing a growing global population, because, due to their population density, they set the demand. To ensure that food systems are sustainable, as well as nourishing, one solution often suggested is to shorten their supply chains toward a regional rather than a global basis. While such regional systems may have a range of costs and benefits, we investigate the mitigation potential of regionalized urban food systems by examining the greenhouse gas emissions associated with food transport. Using data on food consumption for 7108 urban administrative units (UAUs), we simulate total transport emissions for both regionalized and globalized supply chains. In regionalized systems, the UAUs' demands are fulfilled by peripheral food production, whereas to simulate global supply chains, food demand is met from an international pool (where the origin can be any location globally). We estimate that regionalized systems could reduce current emissions from food transport. However, because longer supply chains benefit from maximizing comparative advantage, this emission reduction would require closing yield gaps, reducing food waste, shifting toward diversified farming, and consuming seasonal produce. Regionalization of food systems will be an essential component to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees C in the future.
Annual greenhouse gas emissions have increased more than threefold between 1950 and 2014, posing a major threat to the integrity of the entire earth system and subsequently to humankind. Consequently, roadmaps towards low-carbon pathways are urgently needed. Our study contributes to a more detailed understanding of the dynamics of country based emission patterns and uses them to discuss prospective low-carbon pathways for countries. As availability of databases on sectoral emissions substantially increased, we employ machine learning techniques to classify emission features and pathways. By doing so, 18 representative emission patterns are derived. Overall emissions from seven sectors and for 167 countries covering the time span from 1950 to 2014 have been used in the analyses. The following significant trends can be observed: a) increasing per capita emissions due to growing fossil fuel use in many parts of the world, b) a decline in per capita emissions in some countries, and c) a shift in the emission shares, i.e., a reduction of agricultural and land use contributions in certain regions. Using the emission patterns, their dynamics, and best performing countries as role models, we show the possibility for gaining a decent human development without significantly increasing per capita emissions.
Colombia's agriculture, forestry and other land use sector accounts for nearly half of its total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The importance of smallholder deforestation is comparatively high in relation to its regional counterparts, and livestock agriculture represents the largest driver of primary forest depletion. Silvopastoral systems (SPSs) are presented as agroecological solutions that synergistically enhance livestock productivity, improve local farmers' livelihoods and hold the potential to reduce pressure on forest conversion. The department of Caquetá represents Colombia's most important deforestation hotspot. Targeting smallholder livestock farms through survey data, in this work we investigate the GHG mitigation potential of implementing SPSs for smallholder farms in this region. Specifically, we assess whether the carbon sequestration taking place in the soil and biomass of SPSs is sufficient to offset the per-hectare increase in livestock GHG emissions resulting from higher stocking rates. To address these questions we use data on livestock population characteristics and historic land cover changes reported from a survey covering 158 farms and model the carbon sequestration occurring in three different scenarios of progressively-increased SPS complexity using the CO2 fix model. We find that, even with moderate tree planting densities, the implementation of SPSs can reduce GHG emissions by 2.6 Mg CO2e ha−1 yr−1 in relation to current practices, while increasing agriculture productivity and contributing to the restoration of severely degraded landscapes.
In this paper we report on a long multi-wavelength observational campaign of the supergiant fast X-ray transient prototype IGR J17544-2619. A 150 ks-long observation was carried out simultaneously with XMM-Newton and NuSTAR, catching the source in an initial faint X-ray state and then undergoing a bright X-ray outburst lasting approximately 7 ks. We studied the spectral variability during outburst and quiescence by using a thermal and bulk Comptonization model that is typically adopted to describe the X-ray spectral energy distribution of young pulsars in high mass X-ray binaries. Although the statistics of the collected X-ray data were relatively high, we could neither confirm the presence of a cyclotron line in the broad-band spectrum of the source (0.5-40 keV), nor detect any of the previously reported tentative detections of the source spin period. The monitoring carried out with Swift/XRT during the same orbit of the system observed by XMM-Newton and NuSTAR revealed that the source remained in a low emission state for most of the time, in agreement with the known property of all supergiant fast X-ray transients being significantly sub-luminous compared to other supergiant X-ray binaries. Optical and infrared observations were carried out for a total of a few thousand seconds during the quiescence state of the source detected by XMM-Newton and NuSTAR. The measured optical and infrared magnitudes were slightly lower than previous values reported in the literature, but compatible with the known micro-variability of supergiant stars. UV observations obtained with the UVOT telescope on-board Swift did not reveal significant changes in the magnitude of the source in this energy domain compared to previously reported values.
The world is facing a triple burden of undernourishment, obesity, and environmental impacts from agriculture while nourishing its population. This burden makes sustainable nourishment of the growing population a global challenge. Addressing this challenge requires an understanding of the interplay between diets, health, and associated environmental impacts (e.g., climate change). For this, we identify 11 typical diets that represent dietary habits worldwide for the last five decades. Plant-source foods provide most of all three macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein, and fat) in developing countries. In contrast, animal-source foods provide a majority of protein and fat in developed ones. The identified diets deviate from the recommended healthy diet with either too much (e.g., red meat) or too little (e.g., fruits and vegetables) food and nutrition supply. The total calorie supplies are lower than required for two diets. Sugar consumption is higher than recommended for five diets. Three and five diets consist of larger-than-recommended carbohydrate and fat shares, respectively. Four diets with a large share of animal-source foods exceed the recommended value of red meat. Only two diets consist of at least 400 gm/cap/day of fruits and vegetables while accounting for food waste. Prevalence of undernourishment and underweight dominates in the diets with lower calories. In comparison, a higher prevalence of obesity is observed for diets with higher calories with high shares of sugar, fat, and animal-source foods. However, embodied emissions in the diets do not show a clear relation with calorie supplies and compositions. Two high-calorie diets embody more than 1.5 t CO<mml:semantics>2</mml:semantics>eq/cap/yr, and two low-calorie diets embody around 1 t CO<mml:semantics>2</mml:semantics>eq/cap/yr. Our analysis highlights that sustainable and healthy diets can serve the purposes of both nourishing the population and, at the same time, reducing the environmental impacts of agriculture.
Agriculture in India accounts for 18% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and uses significant land and water. Various socioeconomic factors and food subsidies influence diets in India. Indian food systems face the challenge of sustainably nourishing the 1.3 billion population. However, existing studies focus on a few food system components, and holistic analysis is still missing. We identify Indian food systems covering six food system components: food consumption, production, processing, policy, environmental footprints, and socioeconomic factors from the latest Indian household consumer expenditure survey. We identify 10 Indian food systems using k-means cluster analysis on 15 food system indicators belonging to the six components. Based on the major source of calorie intake, we classify the ten food systems into production-based (3), subsidy-based (3), and market-based (4) food systems. Home-produced and subsidized food contribute up to 2000 kcal/consumer unit (CU)/day and 1651 kcal/CU/day, respectively, in these food systems. The calorie intake of 2158 to 3530 kcal/CU/day in the food systems reveals issues of malnutrition in India. Environmental footprints are commensurate with calorie intake in the food systems. Embodied GHG, land footprint, and water footprint estimates range from 1.30 to 2.19 kg CO(2)eq/CU/day, 3.89 to 6.04 m(2)/CU/day, and 2.02 to 3.16 m(3)/CU/day, respectively. Our study provides a holistic understanding of Indian food systems for targeted nutritional interventions on household malnutrition in India while also protecting planetary health.
Hungry cities: how local food self-sufficiency relates to climate change, diets, and urbanisation
(2019)
Using a newly developed model approach and combining it with remote sensing, population, and climate data, first insights are provided into how local diets, urbanisation, and climate change relates to local urban food self-sufficiency. In plain terms, by utilizing the global peri-urban (PU) food production potential approximately lbn urban residents (30% of global urban population) can be locally nourished, whereby further urbanisation is by far the largest pressure factor on PU agriculture, followed by a change of diets, and climate change. A simple global food transport model which optimizes transport and neglects differences in local emission intensities indicates that CO2 emissions related to food transport can be reduced by a factor of 10.
Avoiding food loss and waste may counteract the increasing food demand and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the agricultural sector. This is crucial because of limited options available to increase food production. In the year 2010, food availability was 20% higher than was required on a global scale. Thus, a more sustainable food production and adjusted consumption would have positive environmental effects. This study provides a systematic approach to estimate consumer level food waste on a country scale and globally, based on food availability and requirements. The food requirement estimation considers demographic development, body weights, and physical activity levels. Surplus between food availability and requirements of a given country is considered as food waste. The global food requirement changed from 2,300 kcal/cap/day to 2,400 kcal/cap/day during the last 50 years, while food surplus grew from 310 kcal/cap/day to 510 kcal/cap/day. Similarly, GHG emissions related to the food surplus increased from 130 Mt CO2eq/yr to 530 Mt CO2eq/yr, an increase of more than 300%. Moreover, the global food surplus may increase up to 850 kcal/cap/day, while the total food requirement will increase only by 2%-20% by 2050. Consequently, GHG emissions associated with the food waste may also increase tremendously to 1.9-2.5 Gt CO2eq/yr.
This study explores the potential for regions to shift to a local food supply using food self-sufficiency (FSS) as an indicator. We considered a region food self-sufficient when its total calorie production is enough to meet its demand. For future scenarios, we considered population growth, dietary changes, improved feed conversion efficiency, climate change, and crop yield increments. Starting at the 5' resolution, we investigated FSS from the lowest administrative levels to continents. Globally, about 1.9 billion people are self-sufficient within their 5' grid, while about 1 billion people from Asia and Africa require cross-continental agricultural trade in 2000. By closing yield gaps, these regions can achieve FSS, which also reduces international trade and increases a self-sufficient population in a 5' grid to 2.9 billion. The number of people depending on international trade will vary between 1.5 and 6 billion by 2050. Climate change may increase the need for international agricultural trade by 4% to 16%.