A new study from International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis IIAS considers whether it is possible to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture by producing more food on less land. It specifically focuses on the effects of crop yield and livestock feed efficiency scenarios on GHG emissions from agriculture and land use change in developing countries.

This book by Michael I. Brown presents a major critique of the aims and policies of REDD as currently structured, particularly in terms of their social feasibility. With deforestation being a key source of greenhouse gas emissions and of climate change, and forests representing major sinks for carbon initiatives such as REDD, reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, have however been widely endorsed by policy-makers.

This report by Forum for the Future’s Stephanie Draper focuses on how the challenges within the food system can best be tackled and how to make it more sustainable. The report proposes looking at systems innovation to find solutions and it identifies challenges in the current food system ranging from feeding a growing population while coping with the impacts of climate change, to providing secure and affordable energy to all while reducing C02 emissions.

This study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health examines the approaches taken by NGOs in the U.S., Canada, and Sweden to encourage consumers to reduce their meat consumption in light of climate change.

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD PRESS RELEASE A policy known as sustainable intensification could help meet the challenges of increasing demands for food from a growing global population, argues a team of scientists in an article in the journal Science.

This CCAFS blogpost by Timm Tennigkeit and Andreas Wilkes argues that agriculture is a major driver of deforestation, but offers great mitigation potential if managed properly. The authors’ recently released research report finds that emission reduction approaches can also be cost competitive.

In this excellent Guardian article Myles Allen of Oxford University describes and comments on reactions to a paper that he and his colleagues published in the journal Nature Geoscience. Their paper gives a new best estimate for the amount of warming that is expected due to a doubling of GHG concentrations in the atmosphere. It estimates a warming of about 1.3˚C, somewhat lower than previous estimates of 1.8°C.

This report looks at the role of consumption based emissions (i.e. taking into account emissions embedded in imported goods) in contributing to the UK’s overall carbon footprint. It covers past trends and sets out future scenarios for UK consumption emissions. It also looks at the lifecycle emissions of low-carbon technologies in order to understand how their deployment would impact the UK’s carbon footprint.

Europe is reforming its biofuels policy due to concerns raised about its impact on global land use change patterns and global food markets. The negative environmental impacts of the biofuels policy have been well demonstrated, but what is less clear are the economic implications.