The Contribution of Agricultural Trade and Transport to Climate Change

Climate change inducing greenhouse gas emissions have grown considerably over the last decades and will grow further. We will analyze the impact of possible future trade scenarios until 2045 on greenhouse gas emissions, by looking not only on emissions generated by agricultural production, but also on CO2-emissions resulting from the global transport of agricultural goods.
The analysis of the combined e ect is performed using the global land use model MAgPIE trade (Model of Agricultural Production and its Impact on the Environment”). The optimization model maps not only spatially explicit land use patterns and related greenhouse gas emissions, but due to the implemented bilateral trade we can also determine the CO2-emissions stemming from the transport of the agricultural goods.
With this study we are therefore able to compare CO2-emissions resulting from an increased international trade to landuse- and landuse change emissions resulting from producing agricultural goods in economically more appropriate regions.