Past and present biophysical redundancy of countries as a buffer to changes in food supply

Fader, Marianela, Rulli, Maria Cristina, Carr, Joel, Angelo, Jampel Dell’, D'Odorico, Paolo, Gephart, Jessica A, Kummu, Matti, Magliocca, Nicholas, Porkka, Miina, Prell, Christina, Puma, Michael J, Ratajczak, Zak, Seekell, David A, Suweis, Samir and Tavoni, Alessandro ORCID: 0000-0002-2057-5720 (2016) Past and present biophysical redundancy of countries as a buffer to changes in food supply. Environmental Research Letters, 11 (5). pp. 1-15. ISSN 1748-9326

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Abstract

Spatially diverse trends in population growth, climate change, industrialization, urbanization and economic development are expected to change future food supply and demand. These changes may affect the suitability of land for food production, implying elevated risks especially for resource constrained, food-importing countries.Wepresent the evolution of biophysical redundancy for agricultural production at country level, from 1992 to 2012. Biophysical redundancy, defined as unused biotic and abiotic environmental resources, is represented by the potential food production of ‘spare land’, available water resources (i.e., not already used for human activities), as well as production increases through yield gap closure on cultivated areas and potential agricultural areas. In 2012, the biophysical redundancy of 75 (48) countries, mainly in North Africa, Western Europe, the Middle East and Asia, was insufficient to produce the caloric nutritional needs for at least 50% (25%) of their population during a year. Biophysical redundancy has decreased in the last two decades in 102 out of 155 countries, 11 of these went from high to limited redundancy, and nine of these from limited to very low redundancy. Although the variability of the drivers of change across different countries is high, improvements in yield and population growth have a clear impact on the decreases of redundancy towards the very low redundancy category.Wetook a more detailed look at countries classified as ‘Low Income Economies (LIEs)’ since they are particularly vulnerable to domestic or external food supply changes, due to their limited capacity to offset for food supply decreases with higher purchasing power on the international market. Currently, nine LIEs have limited or very low biophysical redundancy. Many of these showed a decrease in redundancy over the last two decades, which is not always linked with improvements in per capita food availability.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://iopscience.iop.org/journal/1748-9326
Additional Information:	© 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd © CC-BY 3.0
Divisions:	Grantham Research Institute
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences
Date Deposited:	23 May 2016 10:59
Last Modified:	17 Oct 2024 17:19
Projects:	DBI-1052875, NR-11-LABX-0061, ANR-11-IDEX-0001-02, 603542, DGE-00809128, 129/2013 Prot. 1634, 267463, NNX08AJ75A, ES/K006576/1, 1402033
Funders:	National Science Foundation, Labex OT-Med, French Government, Seventh Framework Programme, National Science Foundation, Carl Tryggers Foundationfor Scientific Research, University of Padova Physics and Astronomy Department Senior, Maa-ja vesitekniikan tukiry, Academy of Finland, Interdisciplinary Global Change Research, Economic and Social Research Council, Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, National Science Foundation
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/66581

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