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1.
We analyze global elemental phosphorus flows in 2009 for (1) mining to products, (2) animal and human manure flows, (3) crop harvests and animal production, (4) food production, (5) soil erosion, (6) and crop uptake. Informed by the flow assessment the potential and cost of phosphorus usage reduction and recycling measures are quantified, and fed into a constructed phosphorus supply-demand model with reserve assessment to assess the impact of these measures on phosphate rock resource availability. According to our results in 2009 globally 21.4 Mt elemental phosphorus from rock phosphate was consumed in products of which 17.6 Mt used as fertilizers, fully able to cover erosion losses and outputs in agriculture in aggregate, but insufficient from the perspective of bio-available phosphorus in soils. We find substantial scope for phosphorus use reduction, at potentially 6.9 Mt phosphorus, or 32% of 2009 phosphate rock supply. Another 6.1 Mt, or 28% can technologically be recycled from waterways and wastewater, but at a cost substantially above any foreseeable phosphate rock fertilizer price. The model results suggests phosphate rock reserves are sufficient to meet demand into the 22nd century, and can be extended well into the 23rd century with assessed use reduction and recycling measures. 相似文献
2.
The phosphorus (P) cycle has been significantly altered by human activities. For this paper, we explored the sustainability of current P flows in terms of resource depletion and the ultimate fate of these flows. The analysis shows that rapid depletion of extractable phosphate rock is not very likely, in the near term. Under best estimates, depletion would be around 20–35%. In worst case scenarios, about 40–60% of the current resource base would be extracted by 2100. At the same time, production will concentrate in Asia, Africa and West Asia, and production costs will likely have increased. As there are no substitutes for phosphorus plant nutrients in agriculture, arguably even partial depletion of P resources may in the long run be relevant for the sustainability of agriculture. Consumption trends lead to large flows of phosphorus to surface water and a considerable build-up of phosphorus in agricultural soils in arable lands. This may allow a reduction in future P fertiliser application rates in crop production. Results also indicate a global depletion of P pools in soils under grassland, which may be a threat to ruminant production. 相似文献
3.
The element phosphorus underpins the viability of global and national food systems, by ensuring soil fertility, maximising crop yields, supporting farmer livelihoods and ultimately nutritional security of the global population. The implications of global phosphorus scarcity therefore have serious potential consequences for future food security, yet these implications have not been be comprehensively or sufficiently assessed at the global or national scales. This paper offers a new integrated framework for assessing the vulnerability of national food systems to global phosphorus scarcity—the Phosphorus Vulnerability Assessment framework. Drawing on developments in assessing climate and water vulnerability, the framework identifies and integrates 26 phosphorus-related biophysical, technical, geopolitical, socio-economic and institutional factors that can lead to food system vulnerability. The theoretical framework allows analysis of context-specific food system by examining impact due to exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. The framework will also ultimately provide guidance for food and agriculture policy-makers, phosphate producers and phosphorus end-users (primarily farmers and consumers) to take action to reduce their vulnerability to this new global challenge. 相似文献
4.
Today's global society is economically, socially and culturally dependent on minerals and metals. While metals are recyclable, terrestrial mineral deposits are by definition ‘non-renewable’ over human timescales and their stocks are thus finite. This raises the spectre of ‘peak minerals’ – the time at which production from terrestrial ores can no longer rise to meet demand and where a maximum (peak) production occurs. Peak minerals prompts a focus on the way minerals can be sustainably used in the future to ensure the services they provide to global society can be maintained.As peak minerals approaches (and is passed in some cases), understanding and monitoring the dynamics of primary mineral production, recycling and dematerialisation, in the context of national and global discussions about mineral resources demand and the money earned from their sale, will become essential for informing and establishing mechanisms for sustainable mineral governance and use efficiency into the future. Taking a cross-scale approach, this paper explores the economic and productivity impacts of peak minerals, and how changes in the mineral production profile are influenced not only by technological and scarcity factors, but also by environmental and social constraints. Specifically we examine the impacts of peak minerals in Australia, a major global minerals supplier, and the consequences for the Asia-Pacific region, a major destination for Australia's minerals.This research has profound implications for local and regional/global sustainability of mineral and metal use. The focus on services is useful for encouraging discussion of transitions in how such services can be provided in a future more sustainable economy, when mineral availability is constrained. The research also begins to address the question of how we approach the development of strategies to maximise returns from mineral wealth over generations. 相似文献
5.
Meeting the food needs of the growing and increasingly affluent human population with the planet’s limited resources is a major challenge of our time. Seen as the preferred approach to global food security issues, ‘sustainable intensification’ is the enhancement of crop yields while minimizing environmental impacts and preserving the ability of future generations to use the land. It is still unclear to what extent sustainable intensification would allow humanity to meet its demand for food commodities. Here we use the footprints for water, nitrogen, carbon and land to quantitatively evaluate resource demands and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of future agriculture and investigate whether an increase in these environmental burdens of food production can be avoided under a variety of dietary scenarios. We calculate average footprints of the current diet and find that animal products account for 43–87% of an individual’s environmental burden – compared to 18% of caloric intake and 39% of protein intake. Interestingly, we find that projected improvements in production efficiency would be insufficient to meet future food demand without also increasing the total environmental burden of food production. Transitioning to less impactful diets would in many cases allow production efficiency to keep pace with growth in human demand while minimizing the food system’s environmental burden. This study provides a useful approach for evaluating the attainability of sustainable targets and for better integrating food security and environmental impacts. 相似文献
6.
Assessments of the future of food supply and demand at global and regional scales must consider both the environmental and social constraints on agricultural production. Desertification is one of these constraints, and may actually be accelerated in the drive for agriculturally-based economic development or food self-sufficiency. In this paper we first consider two key studies of food futures—a 1981 study by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and a 1982 study by FAO-UNFPA-IIASA - and review their assessments of environmental and social constraints, climatic change and desertification. We suggest that the studies are somewhat optimistic in assessing both the social and environmental constraints on food systems, and note that the concern about desertification plays a small role in these studies. 相似文献
7.
Human appropriation of land for food production has fundamentally altered the Earth system, with impacts on water, soil, air quality, and the climate system. Changes in population, dietary preferences, technology and crop productivity have all played important roles in shaping today’s land use. In this paper, we explore how past and present developments in diets impact on global agricultural land use. We introduce an index for the Human Appropriation of Land for Food (HALF), and use it to isolate the effects of diets on agricultural land areas, including the potential consequences of shifts in consumer food preferences. We find that if the global population adopted consumption patterns equivalent to particular current national per capita rates, agricultural land use area requirements could vary over a 14-fold range. Within these variations, the types of food commodities consumed are more important than the quantity of per-capita consumption in determining the agricultural land requirement, largely due to the impact of animal products and in particular ruminant species. Exploration of the average diets in the USA and India (which lie towards but not at global consumption extremes) provides a framework for understanding land use impacts arising from different food consumption habits. Hypothetically, if the world were to adopt the average Indian diet, 55% less agricultural land would be needed to satisfy demand, while global consumption of the average USA diet would necessitate 178% more land. Waste and over-eating are also shown to be important. The area associated with food waste, including over-consumption, given global adoption of the consumption patterns of the average person in the USA, was found to be twice that required for all food production given an average Indian per capita consumption. Therefore, measures to influence future diets and reduce food waste could substantially contribute towards global food security, as well as providing climate change mitigation options. 相似文献
8.
Global pet ownership, especially of cats and dogs, is rising with income growth, and so too are the environmental impacts associated with their food. The global extent of these impacts has not been quantified, and existing national assessments are potentially biased due to the way in which they account for the relative impacts of constituent animal by-products (ABPs). ABPs typically have lower value than other animal products (i.e. meat, milk and eggs), but are nevertheless associated with non-negligible environmental impacts. Here we present the first global environmental impact assessment of pet food. The approach is novel in applying an economic value allocation approach to the impact of ABPs and other animal products to represent better the environmental burden. We find annual global dry pet food production is associated with 56–151 Mt CO2 equivalent emissions (1.1%−2.9% of global agricultural emissions), 41–58 Mha agricultural land-use (0.8–1.2% of global agricultural land use) and 5–11 km3 freshwater use (0.2–0.4% of water extraction of agriculture). These impacts are equivalent to an environmental footprint of around twicethe UK land area, and would make greenhouse gas emission from pet food around the 60th highest emitting country, or equivalent to total emissions from countries such as Mozambique or the Philippines. These results indicate that rising pet food demand should be included in the broader global debate about food system sustainability. 相似文献
9.
Greenhouse gas abatement policies will increase the demand for renewable sources of energy, including bioenergy. In combination
with a global growing demand for food, this could lead to a food-fuel competition for bio-productive land. Proponents of bioenergy
have suggested that energy crop plantations may be established on less productive land as a way of avoiding this potential
food-fuel competition. However, many of these suggestions have been made without any underlying economic analysis. In this
paper, we develop a long-term economic optimization model (LUCEA) of the U.S. agricultural and energy system to analyze this
possible competition for land and to examine the link between carbon prices, the energy system dynamics and the effect of
the land competition on food prices. Our results indicate that bioenergy plantations will be competitive on cropland already
at carbon taxes about US $20/ton C. As the carbon tax increases, food prices more than double compared to the reference scenario
in which there is no climate policy. Further, bioenergy plantations appropriate significant areas of both cropland and grazing
land. In model runs where we have limited the amount of grazing land that can be used for bioenergy to what many analysts
consider the upper limit, most of the bioenergy plantations are established on cropland. Under the assumption that more grazing
land can be used, large areas of bioenergy plantations are established on grazing land, despite the fact that yields are assumed
to be much lower (less than half) than on crop land. It should be noted that this allocation on grazing land takes place as
a result of a competition between food and bioenergy production and not because of lack of it. The estimated increase in food
prices is largely unaffected by how much grazing land can be used for bioenergy production. 相似文献
10.
To a set of well-regarded international scenarios (UNEP’s GEO-4), we have added consideration of the demand, supply, and energy implications related to copper production and use over the period 2010–2050. To our knowledge, these are the first comprehensive metal supply and demand scenarios to be developed. We find that copper demand increases by between 275 and 350% by 2050, depending on the scenario. The scenario with the highest prospective demand is not Market First (a “business as usual” vision), but Equitability First, a scenario of transition to a world of more equitable values and institutions. These copper demands exceed projected copper mineral resources by mid-century and thereafter. Energy demand for copper production also demonstrates strong increases, rising to as much as 2.4% of projected 2050 overall global energy demand. We investigate possible policy responses to these results, concluding that improving the efficiency of the copper cycle and encouraging the development of copper-free energy distribution on the demand side, and improving copper recycling rates on the supply side are the most promising of the possible options. Improving energy efficiency in primary copper production would lead to a reduction in the energy demand by 0.5% of projected 2050 overall global energy demand. In addition, encouraging the shift towards renewable technologies is important to minimize the impacts associated with copper production. 相似文献
11.
Christoph Schmitz Anne Biewald Hermann Lotze-Campen Alexander Popp Jan Philipp Dietrich Benjamin Bodirsky Michael Krause Isabelle Weindl 《Global Environmental Change》2012,22(1):189-209
The volume of agricultural trade increased by more than ten times throughout the past six decades and is likely to continue with high rates in the future. Thereby, it largely affects environment and climate. We analyse future trade scenarios covering the period of 2005–2045 by evaluating economic and environmental effects using the global land-use model MAgPIE (“Model of Agricultural Production and its Impact on the Environment”). This is the first trade study using spatially explicit mapping of land use patterns and greenhouse gas emissions. We focus on three scenarios: the reference scenario fixes current trade patterns, the policy scenario follows a historically derived liberalisation pathway, and the liberalisation scenario assumes a path, which ends with full trade liberalisation in 2045.Further trade liberalisation leads to lower global costs of food. Regions with comparative advantages like Latin America for cereals and oil crops and China for livestock products will export more. In contrast, regions like the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia face the highest increases of imports. Deforestation, mainly in Latin America, leads to significant amounts of additional carbon emissions due to trade liberalisation. Non-CO2 emissions will mostly shift to China due to comparative advantages in livestock production and rising livestock demand in the region. Overall, further trade liberalisation leads to higher economic benefits at the expense of environment and climate, if no other regulations are put in place. 相似文献
12.
Successful adaptation to global environmental change will require confronting multiple unfolding challenges in concert. Coastal regions vulnerable to sea level rise and tropical storms will likely also be influenced by resource limitation in an uncertain future. In this paper, we explore the interrelated dynamics of coastal population migration, economic instability, and anthropogenic phosphorus (P) flows. Accounting for P flows and improving human P use efficiency are critical tasks given the finite global supply of phosphate rock and widespread eutrophication. We use material flow analysis to examine societal P metabolism in the Upper Pontchartrain Basin in coastal Louisiana, USA for two 5-y time periods (2001–2005 and 2006–2010) to capture the effects of fertilizer economics and population growth partially driven by the impact of Hurricane Katrina in the lower basin in 2005. Mass balances encompass human-mediated P fluxes in food production and consumption subsystems across agricultural, developed, and forested landscapes. Drastic reductions in locally purchased inorganic P fertilizer (78% decline between periods) were correlated to increases in fertilizer prices. Total P input to the study region decreased from 5452 to 3268 Mg P y−1 between periods. Changes in P flows were primarily driven by fertilizer economics, declining dairy production, and the influx of new residents, which has been characterized by decentralized settlement that limits P recycling. Societal P metabolic efficiency increased from 22% to 32% due largely to reduced fertilizer inputs. Leakage to the Pontchartrain Estuary and the Mississippi River represented 17–23% of total system P input, while the vast majority of P accumulated within soils, wastewater systems, and landfills. We discuss basin trends and management implications. A historic opportunity exists to encourage future coastal development characterized by synergies between local agriculture and human habitation to promote energy efficient nutrient recycling. The effect would be a decreased vulnerability to future fertilizer price spikes, along with the mitigation of current and future eutrophication. 相似文献
13.
In recent decades there has been a sustained and substantial shift in human diets across the globe towards including more livestock-derived foods. Continuing debates scrutinize how these dietary shifts affect human health, the natural environment, and livelihoods. However, amidst these debates there remain unanswered questions about how demand for livestock-derived foods may evolve over the upcoming decades for a range of scenarios for key drivers of change including human population, income, and consumer preferences. Future trends in human population and income in our scenarios were sourced from three of the shared socioeconomic pathways. We used scenario-based modeling to show that average protein demand for red meat (beef, sheep, goats, and pork), poultry, dairy milk, and eggs across the globe would increase by 14% per person and 38% in total between the year 2020 and the year 2050 if trends in income and population continue along a mid-range trajectory. The fastest per person rates of increase were 49% in South Asia and 55% in sub-Saharan Africa. We show that per person demand for red meat in high-income countries would decline by 2.8% if income elasticities of demand (a partial proxy for consumer preferences, based on the responsiveness of demand to income changes) in high-income countries decline by 100% by 2050 under a mid-range trajectory for per person income growth, compared to their current trajectory. Prices are an important driver of demand, and our results demonstrate that the result of a decline in red meat demand in high-income countries is strongly related to rising red meat prices, as projected by our scenario-based modeling. If the decline in the income elasticity of demand occurred in all countries rather than only in high-income countries, then per person red meat demand in high-income countries would actually increase in 2050 by 8.9% because the income elasticity-driven decline in global demand reduces prices, and the effect of lower prices outweighs the effect of a decline in the income elasticity of demand. Our results demonstrate the importance of interactions between income, prices, and the income elasticity of demand in projecting future demand for livestock-derived foods. We complement the existing literature on food systems and global change by providing quantitative evidence about the possible space for the future demand of livestock-derived foods, which has important implications for human health and the natural environment. 相似文献
14.
The foundations of modern society are based on metals, yet their production is currently placing considerable strain on the Earth’s carrying capacity. Here, we develop a century-long scenario for six major metals (iron, aluminum, copper, zinc, lead, and nickel) harmonized with climate goals, with the goal of establishing science-based targets. We show that for the metal sector to contribute proportionally to emission reductions targets of the industrial sector, global in-use metal stocks need to converge from the current level of around 4 t/capita to about 7 t/capita. This will require today’s high-income countries to contract their per capita stock from current levels of about 12 t/capita to make room for growth in countries that are presently classified as middle- and low-income countries. In such a contraction and convergence scenario, primary production of all six metals will peak by 2030, and secondary production will surpass primary production by at least 2050. Consequently, cumulative ore requirements over the 21st century will remain below currently identified resources, implying that natural ore extraction will be limited by emissions budgets before existing resources can be depleted. Importantly, realizing such system changes will require urgent and concerted international efforts involving all countries, but specific responsibilities will vary according to income level. Namely, wealthy countries will need to use existing metal stocks more intensively and for longer periods to reduce stock replacement demand, while poor countries will need to develop long-lasting and material-efficient infrastructure to curtail stock expansion demand in the first half of the 21st century. 相似文献
15.
This paper elaborates in what way a dynamic perspective on reserves, resources and geopotential is necessary to provide robust estimates on resource availability. We introduce concepts of essentiality, criticality and economic scarcity and discuss for the case of phosphorus (P) how they are defined and may be measured. The case of P is considered in detail as P an essential element for global food security with a highly dissipative use and is geographically unevenly distributed across the globe. We distinguish and relate the complementarity between physical and economic scarcity and discuss limits and potential of static indicators such as static lifetime, Hubbert curve applications, and the Herfindahl–Hirschman-Index of P for predicting future availability of these resources. We reveal that these static indicators are – in general – not valid approaches to predict physical scarcity of resources. Geological data show that though the P reserves have not been systematically and completely assessed on a global scale, the static lifetime of P is high. When acknowledging socio-economic and technological dynamics, and available geological facts, statements predicting physical scarcity or a peak in P production within a few decades are unlikely to be accurate or valid. We elaborate that some simplified indicators such as static lifetime or the Hubbert curve based prediction of peaks may serve as screening indicators preceding early warning research, which may induce increased mining activities, technology innovation or other actions. However, in general, these simplified indicators are not valid approaches to predict physical scarcity of resources. Although one day there may be a supply-driven P production peak, demand-driven production plateaus and multiple peaks are probable in the near future. Given its geopotential, essentiality, and the learning curve of efficient fertilizer use, P is subject to demand-driven market dynamics. Thus, a symmetric decline and unavoidable shortage of P in the next decades are unlikely. This insight does not refute the need to close the anthropogenic P loop. Activities associated with P production and consumption use has a significant pollution potential in part because of the dissipative nature. The paper reveals the necessity to mitigate risks (such as economic scarcity, especially for poor farmers) of both short-term price peaks and longer lasting step-changes in price, e.g. due to knowledge gaps of technological adaptation in energy and water management or other reasons of insufficient supply-demand dynamics management. The complexity of this task necessitates a transdisciplinary approach. 相似文献
16.
Victorian farmers have experienced significant impact from climate change associated with drought and more recently flooding. These factors form a convergence with a complex of other factors to change production systems physically; and farmers’ decision making is variously described as adaptive or maladaptive to these drivers of change. Recently updated State Government policies on farming, climate and water have immediate and long term implications for food production systems but are not readily interpreted at a local scale. Further, peak oil and energy security are only partially integrated into either climate or water policy discourse. In effect, despite some far-sighted words about the meaning of climate change, uncertainty is largely met with a ‘business as usual’ mantra. Farmer narratives are used to demonstrate their systemic and increasing vulnerability and likelihood of perverse outcomes. The Future Farming strategy and Our Water Our Future are briefly analyzed, as are potential implications of the rhetoric of newly elected conservative government. Using ideas from Bourdieu and Bhabha we suggest that the reliance on farmers being able to innovate and take up opportunities associated with the uncertainty of large scale changes in climate and energy availability are misguided. It is more likely that current policy directions entrench the values of the global market and its elite, leaving farmers locked-in to historical structural responses that will not be successful in the long-term and will diminish their ability to imagine radical and diverse ways of avoiding the maladaptive structures currently surrounding their production systems. 相似文献
17.
In this paper, we present four model-based scenarios exploring the potential for resource efficiency for energy, land and phosphorus use, and implications for resource depletion, climate change and biodiversity. The scenarios explored include technological improvements as well as structural changes in production systems and lifestyle changes. Many of such changes have long lead times, requiring up front and timely investments in infrastructure, innovative incentive structures and education. For simulating the scenarios we applied the IMAGE modelling framework, with a time horizon until 2050.Our findings confirm a large potential for more efficient resource use: our (no new policies) baseline scenario shows a global increase, between 2010 and 2050, by 80% of primary energy use, 4% of arable land and 40% of phosphorus fertilisers. These numbers are reduced to +25% (primary energy), −9% (arable land) and +9% (phosphorus) in the global resource efficiency scenario. Baseline developments and resource efficiency opportunities vary strikingly among regions, resources and sectors. Phosphorus use, for example, is expected to increase most on croplands in developing countries, whereas the largest potential for phosphorus use efficiency lies in the livestock sector and urban sewage treatment in industrialised countries. Consequently, while resource efficiency resonates well as a general notion in policy thinking, concrete policies need to be region-specific, resource-specific and sector-specific.Efficiency efforts on one resource tend to contribute to efficient use of other resources and to benefit the environment. There are also trade-offs, however, and the synergies analysed do not make problem-specific policies redundant: in 2050, the global resource efficiency scenario presents higher phosphorus use and higher use of fossil fuels than in 2010; greenhouse gas emission targets are met by half; and biodiversity loss slows down but is not halted. Moreover, part of the efficiency gains in land and phosphorus use is sacrificed when this scenario is combined with ambitious climate policy, due to the substantial resource requirements for the deployment of bio-energy—albeit much less than in a scenario without more efficient resource use. 相似文献
18.
Gorka Merino Manuel Barange Julia L. Blanchard James Harle Robert Holmes Icarus Allen Edward H. Allison Marie Caroline Badjeck Nicholas K. Dulvy Jason Holt Simon Jennings Christian Mullon Lynda D. Rodwell 《Global Environmental Change》2012,22(4):795-806
Expansion in the world's human population and economic development will increase future demand for fish products. As global fisheries yield is constrained by ecosystems productivity and management effectiveness, per capita fish consumption can only be maintained or increased if aquaculture makes an increasing contribution to the volume and stability of global fish supplies. Here, we use predictions of changes in global and regional climate (according to IPCC emissions scenario A1B), marine ecosystem and fisheries production estimates from high resolution regional models, human population size estimates from United Nations prospects, fishmeal and oil price estimations, and projections of the technological development in aquaculture feed technology, to investigate the feasibility of sustaining current and increased per capita fish consumption rates in 2050. We conclude that meeting current and larger consumption rates is feasible, despite a growing population and the impacts of climate change on potential fisheries production, but only if fish resources are managed sustainably and the animal feeds industry reduces its reliance on wild fish. Ineffective fisheries management and rising fishmeal prices driven by greater demand could, however, compromise future aquaculture production and the availability of fish products. 相似文献
19.
Adrian Muller 《Climatic change》2009,94(3-4):319-331
Modern bioenergy is seen as a promising option to curb greenhouse gas emissions. There is, however, a potential competition for land and water between bioenergy and food crops. Another question is whether biomass for energy use can be produced in a sustainable manner given the current conventional agricultural production practices. Other than the land and water competition, this question is often neglected in scenarios to meet a significant part of global energy demand with bioenergy. In the following, I address this question. There are sustainable alternatives, for example organic agriculture, to avoid the negative environmental effects of conventional agriculture. Yet, meeting a significant part of global energy demand with biomass grown sustainably may not be possible, as burning significant quantities of organic matter—inherent in bioenergy use—is likely to be incompatible with the principles of such alternatives, which often rely on biomass input for nutrient balance. There may therefore be a trade-off between policies and practices to increase bioenergy and those to increase sustainability in agriculture via practices such as organic farming. This is not a general critique of bioenergy but it points to additional potential dangers of modern bioenergy as a strategy to meet significant parts of world energy demand. 相似文献
20.
Maintaining food security and environmental integrity over time requires a transition towards sustainable food systems. This paper analyzes different dimensions of national food supply sustainability on a global scale. By focusing on four food staples: wheat, rice, maize, and soybeans, the analysis identifies production regions that are more or less environmentally sustainable. It explores the dependence of different countries on calories supplied by these regions. These four staples' production requires 648 million hectares of cropland and about 559 cubic kilometers of irrigation water. It also leads to several environmental impacts, including potential soil loss and species loss. Yet, these impacts and pressures are spread unevenly across agricultural systems.We find that over one-third of the global calorie intake originates from regions with a high per ton environmental impacts. Although most consumed calories are from domestic sources, traded calories mostly originate from environmentally suitable production regions, increasing importing countries' food supply sustainability. This analysis also reveals interregional tradeoffs, where food imports into one region (increased food provision) is associated with high environmental impact in production regions. Further, this typology allows identifying an elusive, often overlooked interregional connection. That is the potential loss of future ecosystem service flow from countries with the lower gross domestic product per capita and high biodiversity. To date, those countries rely primarily on domestic staple production, which puts pressure on vulnerable local ecosystems. Species loss in those regions reduces the potential future interregional flows of genetic material. Alternatively, conservation combined with food imports can maintain diversity and the potential flow of genetic material from those regions. The functional regions typology provides a complete assessment of the interregional connections that make up the global food system. Therefore, it is useful for informing policy analysts and policymakers of a broader collection of stakeholders regarding the local environment. It also provides essential information about the suitability of different policy mechanisms to govern interregional systems. Future research shall expand the functional regions' typology to include additional environmental and human-related (e.g., technological), to cover more crops, and to account for other food categories, such as meat. 相似文献