Bioenergy options in Brazil

Project leader: Ulla Mörtberg

Amazon rainforest at risk

Participants: Flavio L. M. Freitas, Ulla Mörtberg

Brasiliansk regnskog kan förlora sitt skydd

Project period: 2015 – 2019

Funding: Brazilian National Council of Scientific and Technologic Development - CNPQ (Project ID: 249404/2013-3)

Key words: Agricultural expansion, land use governance, bioenergy, planted forest, native vegetation, environmental impacts

Project description

Poster presentation at the Brazilian president visit to KTH

Brazil holds a large share of the world’s remaining natural forests, about one-third of the existing rainforest and most of the Amazon rainforest. Currently, approximately two-third of the Brazilian territory is covered with natural vegetation. Over the coming years, due to population growth, economic development, diet shift, and increased demand for biomass-based energy, the ongoing agriculture expansion and intensification, taking place in Brazil, is expected to continue and intensify. Such an expansion will most certainly contribute to developing remote regions of Brazil, creating business opportunities and generating new jobs in rural areas. However, this development is expected to have various impacts on these rural areas, with various repercussions in the form of environmental and socioeconomic impacts. Agricultural expansion over native vegetation may threaten valuable ecosystem services in various ways, such as losses of natural habitats and biodiversity, changes in the carbon dioxide exchange between biosphere and atmosphere and changes in water quantity and quality. Therefore, in order to understand the land use changes as well as the complexity of its environmental and socio-economic impacts, it is crucial to elaborate, test and validate robust land use change models, which can produce strategic information to support decision making.

Aim

Decision support on the Brazilian Forest Code - a public hearing organized by the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil

This research project aims primarily at enriching the knowledge related to land use changes caused by agriculture expansion for bioenergy production. Here, we employ a Land Use Governance Assessment (LUGA) Model and scenarios analysis to investigate future outcome of land use policy development in Brazil in terms of ecosystem services development. Furthermore, in the scope of this research project, modeling methodologies will be developed and adapted to assess environmental and socio-economic effects of land use policies in Brazil. The results can potentially support the adoption of more sustainable pathways of agriculture expansion and guide the strategies to mitigate negative environmental and socio-economic impacts, while enhancing the gains from this development.

Cooperation

The project is implemented in close cooperation with the Agriculture College of the University of São Paulo (ESALQ/USP), with Prof. Gerd Sparovek, and Chalmers University of Technology, Energy and Environment Department (the Physical Resource Theory Division) with Prof. Göran Berndes

Licentiate seminar: Brazilian land use policies and the development of ecosystem services

Publications