NEW CROPLANDS AT THE EXPENSE OF NATURAL LAND S NATURALES

DEMAND FOR NEW CROPLAND MAY TOP SAFE ENVIRONMENTAL LIMIT – REPORT (from an article by Megan Rowling; Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation - Fri, 24 Jan 2014, cited by AboveTheFold [AboveTheFold@newsletters.environmentalhealthnews.org]; Jan. 25, 2014)

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Demand for new land to grow crops could lead to the conversion of natural areas close to the size of Brazil by 2050, potentially exceeding the level beyond which there is a risk of irreversible and abrupt environmental change, a U.N. report said on Friday.

The need to feed the planet's fast-growing population led cropland to expand 11 percent between 1961 and 2007, at the expense of savannah, grassland and forests, the report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said. Environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity now affect an estimated 23 percent of the world’s soils.

The global cropland area could safely rise to 1,640 million hectares from around 1,500 million now. But by 2050, under business-as-usual conditions, expected land demand will overshoot safe limits, and an additional 320 million to 849 million hectares of natural land may be converted to grow crops, the report calculated, well above the 164 million considered safe.

The expansion of urban areas is also a problem, with up to 5 percent of global land (around 15 billion hectares) expected to be covered by built-up areas by 2050, it said. These often expand at the expense of agricultural land, and agricultural land expands at the expense of forests, especially in tropical regions, it noted.

In a foreword to the report, UNEP's Steiner said growth in cropland cannot be controlled by increasing yields alone, which have started to stagnate in some regions. He pointed to "new opportunities to steer consumption towards levels of sustainability, particularly in high-consuming regions".

Between 161 million and 319 million hectares of land could be saved by 2050, the report said, if the world followed measures including:

- planning land use to minimise expansion of built-up areas on fertile soils

- investing in the restoration of degraded land

- improving farming practices to boost yields in an ecologically and socially acceptable way

- cutting food waste and shifting towards more vegetable-based diets

- reducing subsidies for biofuel crops and phasing out biofuel quotas in consuming countrie

Full article: http://www.trust.org/item/20140124121502-ua8gv/