Biography:
Prof. Hermann Lotze-Campen studied Agricultural Sciences and Agricultural Economics in Kiel (GER), Reading (UK) and Minnesota (USA). He holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Humboldt University Berlin. He is Head of Research Department Climate Resilience at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Professor for Sustainable Land Use and Climate Change at HU Berlin. He works on global land use modelling, climate impacts and adaptation, and land-use-based mitigation.
Abstract:
The bioeconomy is evolving as a consequence of ambitious targets for climate change mitigation. In order to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees, compared to pre-industrial times, as decided in Paris 2015, it is absolutely necessary to transform the complete energy sector towards renewable primary energy sources and to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture and land use change to a minimum. Moreover, the material base for sustainable economic development, i.e. building material as well as substitutes for petro-chemical products, has to come from biomass-based production systems. This raises large opportunities, by fostering sustainable production and consumption (UN SDG 12), emission reduction (SDG 13), and income opportunities for rural communities around the world, mainly farmers and foresters (SDG 1 and 2). However, a growing bioeconomy may also entail large challenges, e.g. increasing competition for land and water between food, feed, energy, and material production (SDG 6 and 15), increasing food prices (SDG 2), and also the necessity to adapt to residual climate impacts at 1.5-2.0 degrees of global warming. The future development of sustainable biomass production systems will determine to a large extent, whether and how human society will fulfil the targets of the UN Agenda 2030 and stay within the Planetary Boundaries. A mix of coherent policy instruments will be an important component of a sustainable socio-economic development. Here we present advancements of the well-established Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) for improved sustainability assessments. We will give examples, how trade-offs, synergies, and co-benefits between different SDG dimensions in the context of a growing bioeconomy can be assessed with integrated computer models.
