Food, Feed, Fuel, Timber or Carbon Sink? Towards Sustainable Land Use

Book excerpt: This book provides a holistic framework for assessing the environmental and economic impacts of land-use strategies for a range of purposes, such as food, animal feed, biomass and biofuels, and timber. Using land for one purpose negates its use for any other competing purpose. Given that it is in limited supply, land needs to be optimised so that it can meet the increasing demand for crops of a growing and wealthier human population, while providing ecosystem services, such as carbon storage (i.e. climate-change mitigation). The framework is quantitative and includes various indirect effects, like indirect land-use change, and is a robust basis with which to assess global impacts from land-use decisions on climate change, ecosystem services and biodiversity.