scholarly journals Sustainability governance of the Danish bioeconomy — the case of bioenergy and biomaterials from agriculture

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Niclas Scott Bentsen ◽  
Søren Larsen ◽  
Inge Stupak

Abstract Background The EU bioeconomy strategy aims to accelerate the European bioeconomy and its contributions to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement. National policies and strategies in many countries promote their bioeconomies. The importance of agricultural crops and residues as raw materials for the bioeconomy is increasingly recognised, but agricultural production also contributes to large impacts on nature and environment. With the aim of assessing the governance measures and their effectiveness in addressing the sustainability of bioenergy and biofuel production, the purpose of this study was to map the governance complex relevant to agricultural crop production in Denmark, and to identify the achievements, challenges and lessons learned. Methods The analysis is based on a review and assessment of publicly available databases, inventory reports and scientific literature on governance measures and their effectiveness. Governance here includes a variety of legislation, agreements, conventions and standardisation. Environmental sustainability is represented by greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector, soil carbon, water quality and biodiversity. Results The agricultural sector has a significant impact on Danish climate performance and on landscapes in the form of soil carbon losses, leaching of nutrients to water bodies and pressures on biodiversity. The governance complex addressing these issues is made up of a variety of state regulation and co-regulation between state and firms, state and NGOs, or NGOs and firms. Much regulation is adopted from EU directives and implemented nationally. Conclusions The analysis found that greenhouse gas emission is a virtually unregulated field and additional regulation is required to live up to Denmark’s 2030 emission reduction targets. The regulatory framework for soil carbon is criticised for its complexity, its competing instruments and its recognition procedures of voluntary co-regulation. For water quality governance measures in place have improved water quality, but it is still difficult to achieve the goals of the Water Framework Directive. It remains a challenge to protect biodiversity in agriculture. Biodiversity is mainly governed by national and supranational regulation, but co-regulating between state and firms and NGOs and firms have been initiated in the framework of the Agricultural Agreement.

2015 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hesam Kamyab ◽  
Jeng Shiun Lim ◽  
Tayebeh Khademi ◽  
Wai Shin Hod ◽  
Rahmalan Ahmad ◽  
...  

Waste generation nowadays is rising in the world and it seems hard to prevent it. Solid Waste Management (SWM) has been a major problem worldwide in most of the fast growing towns and cities among the developing countries all around the world. Food waste and green waste constitute high volumes of municipal solid waste (MSW). The application of compost in the agricultural sector can contribute to sustainable soil health and other co-benefits. The compost produced from biological waste does not contain any chemicals unfavorable to living soil. The objective of this research was to calculate the greenhouse gas emission from the compost processed from the food and green wastes generated on-campus in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) as a pilot project. The result indicated that the composting process promotes the university as a green campus by converting organic wastes into valuable products such as organic fertilizer.


2004 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Johansson ◽  
Jonathan D. Kaplan

Agri-environmental programs, such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, provide payments to livestock and crop producers to generate broadly defined environmental benefits and to help them comply with federal water quality regulations, such as those that require manure nutrients generated on large animal feeding operations to be spread on cropland at no greater than agronomic rates. We couch these policy options in terms of agri-environmental “carrots” and regulatory “sticks,” respectively. The U.S. agricultural sector is likely to respond to these policies in a variety of ways. Simulation analysis suggests that meeting nutrient standards would result in decreased levels of animal production, increased prices for livestock and poultry products, increased levels of crop production, and water quality improvements. However, estimated impacts are not homogeneous across regions. In regions with relatively less cropland per ton of manure produced, the impacts of these policies are more pronounced.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 2506
Author(s):  
Klaus Mittenzwei

This paper studies the hypothesis that farm structure and the regional distribution of agricultural activity themselves have a significant impact on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture. Applying a dynamic model for the Norwegian agricultural sector covering the entire farm population, the model results support the hypothesis. Even without mitigation options, GHG emissions decline by 1.4 per cent if agriculture becomes regionally concentrated and increase by 1.5 per cent if a policy that favors a small-scale farm structure is put in place. Adding a carbon tax to a policy that leads to regional concentration, may help to reconcile competing policy objectives. A switch from animal production to crop production, and an extensification of animal production keeps a large resource base across the country while cutting GHG emissions.


2013 ◽  
Vol 04 (03) ◽  
pp. 1350008 ◽  
Author(s):  
NIKOLINKA SHAKHRAMANYAN ◽  
UWE A. SCHNEIDER ◽  
BRUCE A. McCARL

Climate change may affect the use of pesticides and their associated environmental and human health impacts. This study employs and modifies a partial equilibrium model of the US agricultural sector to examine the effects of alternative regulations of the pesticide and greenhouse gas emission externality. Simulation results indicate that without pesticide externality regulations and low greenhouse gas emission mitigation strategy, climate change benefits from increased agricultural production in the US are more than offset by increased environmental costs. Although the combined regulation of pesticide and greenhouse gas emission externalities increases farmers' production costs, their net income effects are positive because of price adjustments and associated welfare shifts from consumers to producers. The results also show heterogeneous impacts on preferred pest management intensities across major crops. While pesticide externality regulations lead to substantial increases in total water use, climate policies induce the opposite effect.


2017 ◽  
Vol 205 ◽  
pp. 135-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuechen Tan ◽  
Cong Xu ◽  
Dongxue Liu ◽  
Wenliang Wu ◽  
Rattan Lal ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoyu Feng ◽  
Ermias Kebreab

AbstractThe livestock industry is one of the main contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and there is an increasing demand for the industry to reduce its carbon footprint. Several studies have shown that feed additives 3-nitroxypropanol and nitrate to be effective in reducing enteric methane emissions. The objective of this study was to estimate the net mitigating effect of using 3-nitroxypropanol and nitrate on total greenhouse gas emissions in California dairy industry. A life cycle assessment approach was used to conduct a cradle-to-farm gate environmental impact analysis based on dairy production system in California. Emissions associated with crop production, feed additive production, enteric methane, farm management, and manure storage were calculated and expressed as kg CO2 equivalents (CO2e) per kg of energy corrected milk. The total greenhouse gas emissions from baseline, two 3-nitroxypropanol and three nitrate scenarios were 1.12, 0.993, 0.991, 1.08, 1.07, and 1.09 kg CO2e/kg energy corrected milk. The average net reduction rates for 3-nitroxypropanol and nitrate were 11.7% and 3.95%, respectively. In both cases, using the feed additives on the whole herd slightly improved overall carbon footprint reduction compared to limiting its use during lactation phase. Although both 3-nitroxypropanol and nitrate had effects on decreasing the total greenhouse gas emission, the former was much more effective with no known safety issues in reducing the carbon footprint of dairy production in California.


Author(s):  
Nguyen Le Trang ◽  
Bui Thi Thu Trang ◽  
Mai Van Trinh ◽  
Nguyen Tien Sy ◽  
Nguyen Manh Khai

Abstract: This study used the Denitrification-Decomposition (DNDC) model to calculate greenhouse gas emissions from a paddy rice cultivation in ​​Nam Dinh province. The results show that the total CH4 emission from paddy rice field in Nam Dinh province ranges from 404 to 1146kg/ha/year. Total N2O emissions range from 0.8 to 4.2 kg/ha/year; The total amount of CO2e varies between 10,000 and 30,000 kg CO2e / ha / year. CH4 emissions on typical salinealluvial soils, light mechanics are the highest and lowest on alkaline soils. Alluvium, alkaline soils have the highest N2O emissions and the lowest is the typical saline soils. The study has also mapped CH4, N2O and CO2e emissions for Nam Dinh province. Keywords: DNDC, Green house gas, agricultural sector, Nam Dinh,  GIS. References: [1] Bộ Tài nguyên và Môi trường, Báo cáo kỹ thuật kiểm kê quốc gia KNK của Việt Nam năm 2014, NXB Tài Nguyên Môi trường và Bản đồ Việt Nam, 2018.[2] D.L. Giltrap, C.Li, S. Saggar, DNDC: A process-based model of greenhouse gas fluxes from agricultural soils, Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment,Volume 136 (2010), 292–300. https://doi:10.1016/j.agee.2009.06.014.[3] Viện Thổ nhưỡng Nông hóa, Báo cáo kết quả đề tài: “Nghiên cứu, đánh giá tài nguyên đất sản xuất nông nghiệp phục vụ chuyển đổi cơ cấu cây trồng chính có hiệu quả tại tỉnh Nam Định”, 2017.[4] Trung tâm Khí tượng thủy văn quốc gia – Bộ TN&MT, Số liệu thống kê khí tượng thủy văn các trạm khí tượng Văn Lý, Nam Định, Ninh Bình, Thái Bình năm 2014, 2015.[5] Niên giám thống kê tỉnh Nam Định, 2015.[6] T. Weaver, P. Ramachandran, L. Adriano, Policies for High Quality, Safe, and Sustainable Food Supply in the Greater Mekong Subregion. ADB: Manila. (2019) Chapter 7, 178-204.[7] Mai Văn Trịnh, Sổ tay hướng dẫn đo phát thải khí nhà kính trong canh tác lúa. NXB Nông nghiệp, 2016.    


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zheng Liu ◽  
Ningning Yu ◽  
James J. Camberato ◽  
Jia Gao ◽  
Peng Liu ◽  
...  

AbstractIn pursuit of maximum grain yield farmers in the North China Plain usually apply excessive N fertilizer, resulting in wasted resources and environmental pollution. To assess the economic and environmental performances of different nitrogen rates will be conductive to sustain cleaner crop production. An 8-year field experiment was carried out with four treatments, N0 (0 kg ha−1 for winter wheat and summer maize), N1 (168 kg ha−1 for winter wheat and 129 kg ha−1 for summer maize), N2 (240 kg ha−1 for winter wheat and 185 kg ha−1 for summer maize) and N3 (300 kg ha−1 for winter wheat and summer maize), on the double cropping at Dawenkou research field (36°11’N, 117°06’E), Shandong Province, China. The crop production, soil physical-chemical parameters, and greenhouse gas emission are measured and the economic and environmental performances are assessed. The optimal nitrogen rate obtained the highest grain yield of summer maize in 4 of 8 year and was equivalent to conventional N rate in the other years. The nitrogen partial factor productivity and agronomic efficiency of optimal nitrogen rate was 63% and 58% higher than that of conventional nitrogen rate. The optimal nitrogen rate effectively decreased soil bulk density and increased weight percentage of water-stable aggregate and activities of urease and invertase compared to conventional nitrogen rate, which improved soil productivity. The fertilizer nitrogen loss and global warming potential of optimal nitrogen rate reduced by 76% and 35% compared to conventional nitrogen rate. The annual greenhouse gas intensity of optimal nitrogen rate decreased by 14–35% compared to others. The net ecosystem economic budget under optimal nitrogen rate is 252–604 $ ha−1 yr.−1 higher than other addition levels. The optimal nitrogen rate produces more grains and obtains higher economic and environmental benefits.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 965-979
Author(s):  
Tianguo Li ◽  
Xiang Li ◽  
Yong Liang ◽  
Mingrui Li ◽  
Ming Jiang ◽  
...  

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