A stakeholders’ pathway towards a future land use and food system in Germany

Rasche, L., Schneider, U.A., & Steinhauser, J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5989-6855 (2022). A stakeholders’ pathway towards a future land use and food system in Germany. Sustainability Science 18 (1) 441-455. 10.1007/s11625-022-01212-0.

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Abstract

Food systems contribute considerably to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and influence land use. In Germany, many strategies have been proposed by policy-makers to reduce negative impacts and make the food system more sustainable. It is unclear how close the suggested policies, when bundled, will bring the food and land use system towards the targeted goals; and what stakeholders from non-policy-making organizations consider realistic changes in the German food system. We thus surveyed different stakeholder groups on their opinions about realistic changes in the food and land use system in Germany up to 2050, developed four stakeholder pathways, and used an accounting tool to determine the effect of each pathway on indicators such as land use, GHG emissions, and biodiversity conservation potential. The assessment showed that GHG emissions from agricultural activities and land use are reduced from 66 to - 2-22 TgCO2e by 2050, while the area where natural processes predominate increases from 19 to 27-32%, and the resilience of the food system is not negatively influenced. The change is caused mainly by a diet-change-induced reduction of livestock production and agricultural area transformation into areas with higher carbon sequestration rates. If followed, the common stakeholder pathway (based on all stakeholder responses) would thus lead towards a sustainable food and land use system, but only if the underlying assumption of a drastic diet change towards more plant-based products comes true. Stakeholders from the academic and public sectors were more likely to assume that such a change was realistic than stakeholders from the private sector.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Part of a Special Feature: Globally-Consistent National Pathways towards Sustainable Food and Land-use Systems
Uncontrolled Keywords:	FABLE calculator; Food system; GHG emissions; Land use change; Stakeholder survey; Sustainable transformation
Research Programs:	Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE)
Depositing User:	Luke Kirwan
Date Deposited:	08 Sep 2022 12:34
Last Modified:	07 Feb 2023 12:55
URI:	https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/18209

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