Cost-effective mitigation of nitrogen pollution from global croplands

Gu, B., Zhang, X., Lam, S.K., Yu, Y., van Grinsven, H.J.M., Zhang, S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2487-8574, Wang, X., Bodirsky, B.L., Wang, S., Duan, J., Ren, C., Bouwman, L., de Vries, W., Xu, J., Sutton, M.A., & Chen, D. (2023). Cost-effective mitigation of nitrogen pollution from global croplands. Nature 613 (7942) 77-84. 10.1038/s41586-022-05481-8.

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Abstract

Cropland is a main source of global nitrogen pollution1,2. Mitigating nitrogen pollution from global croplands is a grand challenge because of the nature of non-point-source pollution from millions of farms and the constraints to implementing pollution-reduction measures, such as lack of financial resources and limited nitrogen-management knowledge of farmers3. Here we synthesize 1,521 field observations worldwide and identify 11 key measures that can reduce nitrogen losses from croplands to air and water by 30-70%, while increasing crop yield and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) by 10-30% and 10-80%, respectively. Overall, adoption of this package of measures on global croplands would allow the production of 17 ± 3 Tg (1012 g) more crop nitrogen (20% increase) with 22 ± 4 Tg less nitrogen fertilizer used (21% reduction) and 26 ± 5 Tg less nitrogen pollution (32% reduction) to the environment for the considered base year of 2015. These changes could gain a global societal benefit of 476 ± 123 billion US dollars (USD) for food supply, human health, ecosystems and climate, with net mitigation costs of only 19 ± 5 billion USD, of which 15 ± 4 billion USD fertilizer saving offsets 44% of the gross mitigation cost. To mitigate nitrogen pollution from croplands in the future, innovative policies such as a nitrogen credit system (NCS) could be implemented to select, incentivize and, where necessary, subsidize the adoption of these measures.

Item Type:	Article
Research Programs:	Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE) Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE) > Pollution Management (PM)
Depositing User:	Luke Kirwan
Date Deposited:	09 Jan 2023 08:26
Last Modified:	09 Jan 2023 08:26
URI:	https://pure.iiasa.ac.at/18553

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