Global economic effects of changes in crops, pasture, and forests due to changing climate, carbon dioxide, and ozone
Introduction
Multiple environmental changes will have consequences for global vegetation. To the extent that crop yields and pasture and forest productivity are affected, there can be important economic consequences. We examine the combined effects of changes in climate, increases in carbon dioxide (CO2), and changes in tropospheric ozone on crop, pasture, and forest land productivity and the consequences for the global and regional economies. We consider scenarios where there is limited or little effort to control CO2 and ozone precursors, and policy scenarios that limit emissions of these substances. Much analysis and research on the economic impacts of climate change and/or higher ambient levels of CO2 on agriculture have been conducted. Our study is unique in several ways, including the focus on multiple environmental changes, use of transient climate scenarios, comprehensive assessment of crops, pasture and forests, and evaluation of effects in both a reference and in pollution mitigation scenarios.
We apply the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model (IGSM) (Prinn et al., 1999), here updated to focus on the vegetation and economic effects of climate and ozone. In particular, the Terrestrial Ecosystem Model (TEM) component is a biogeochemical model that has been updated to include vegetation response to ozone as described in Felzer et al. (2004). We have also altered the Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model (Paltsev et al., 2005), a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the world economy, to better represent crops, livestock, and forest sectors. In Section 2, we review key previous agricultural impact studies, identifying how our approach advances methods in this field of research. Section 3 reviews briefly the model components used in the study. Section 4 describes the reference and pollution mitigation scenarios. Section 5 describes the results. Section 6 offers some caveats and Section 7 summarizes key results.
Section snippets
Modeling global agricultural economic response to environmental change
Key previous studies of climate and CO2 effects, focusing on those that are global or pioneer new methods, include Parry et al., 1988a, Parry et al., 1988b, Parry et al., 1999, Parry et al., 2004, Adams et al. (1990), Tobey et al. (1992), Reilly and Hohmann (1993), Rosenberg (1993); Rosenzweig and Parry (1994), Mendelsohn et al. (1994), Darwin et al. (1996), Reilly et al. (2003), Izauralde et al. (2003), and Alig et al. (2003). There have been no global estimates of the potential economic
Model descriptions
We briefly describe the MIT IGSM, and then focus attention on the TEM and EPPA components as modified for this work. The MIT IGSM includes sub-models of the relevant aspects of the natural earth system coupled to a model of the human component as it interacts with climate processes. A description of the system components used in Version 1, along with a sensitivity test of key aspects of its behavior, is reported in Prinn et al. (1999).
The major model components of the IGSM are:
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A model of human
Scenarios
We consider the following scenarios.
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High pollution (POLF): There are no efforts to control emissions of GHGs. Emissions coefficients per unit of combustion for other pollutants decline in different regions as incomes increase based on cross-section estimates of the relationship between per capita income and these coefficients in the base year as estimated in Mayer et al. (2000). The decline is estimated separately for each pollutant, and for different combustion sources including large point
Agriculture, pasture, and forestry results
Yields on croplands are taken from TEM estimates of changes in yield for a “generic” C3 crop (Felzer et al., 2004). This crop is grown on areas identified as cropland by McGuire et al. (2001), which has been derived from the historical fractional cropland dataset of Ramankutty and Foley, 1998, Ramankutty and Foley, 1999, for the period of the early 1990s. For pasture and forestry, the change in NPP is used as a measure of yield effects. Fig. 4 shows the results for the six scenarios mapped at
Caveats and comparison with previous work
There have been no similar studies of the combined effects of climate, CO2, and ozone on global crops, pasture, and forestry. There has been considerable work on climate/CO2 effects on crops. Our estimates (Climate and GHGs only scenario) are relatively positive compared with previous work. The broad conclusion of past studies is that mid- and high-latitude areas could see substantial yield gains from climate or climate and CO2 effects, but that yield losses are likely in tropical regions (
Conclusions
Multiple environmental changes will have consequences for global vegetation. To the extent that crop yields and pasture and forest productivity are affected, there can be important economic consequences. We examine the combined effects of changes in climate, increases in CO2, and changes in tropospheric ozone on crop, pasture, and forests, and the consequences for the global and regional economies. We find that climate and CO2 effects are generally positive for crop, livestock, and forestry
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the US Department of Energy, US Environmental Protection Agency, US National Science Foundation, US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration; and the Industry and Foundation Sponsors of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.
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