The Strategic goal is to support policymakers in developing rational, science-based and realistic national, regional and global strategies for the production of food, feed, and bio-energy to achieve sustainability of land and water resources, safeguard food security while promoting rural development.
In the context of ESM strategic goals for now and in the future the research direction and priorities are reflected well in five major projects formulation in the context of the IIASA 2011-2015 research plan. Projects are captured under the following headings:

Doubling Food Provision
Major project in the Food and Water area, contributing to Poverty and Equity
Implementation team: Günther Fischer, Tatiana Ermolieva, Eva Hizsnyik, Sylvia Prieler, Harrij van Velthuizen, David Wiberg in consultation with Markus Amann, Yuri Ermoliev, Arkady Kryazhimskiy, Marek Makowski, and FAO collaborators

Mobilizing resources for the bio-based economy
Major project in Food and Water, contributing to Poverty and Equity and Energy and Climate Change
Implementation team: Sylvia Prieler, Günther Fischer, Harrij van Velthuizen in consultation with Marek Makowski and external collaborators

Water for food and agriculture
Major project in the Food and Water cross-cutting Water area
Implementation team: Harrij van Velthuizen, Günther Fischer, Eva Hizsnyik,David Wiberg, in consultation with Yuri Ermoliev, Marek Makowski and external collaborators

Climate change adaptation of food and water systems
Major project in the Food and Water area
Implementation team: Günther Fischer, Sylvia Prieler, Laixiang Sun, Harrij van Velthuizen, David Wiberg, in consultation with Marek Makowski, Zhan Tian and collaborators

Adaptive Decision Support for Water Management
Major project in the Food and Water area
Implementation team: Günther Fischer, Tatiana Ermolieva, Harrij van Velthuizen, David Wiberg, in consultation with Marek Makowski, Volker Krey, Samir KC, Jan Sendzimir and additional internal and external collaborators.

The LUS group is now finalizing work on several large projects, including the multi-year effort to update the group’s core databases and methodologies to GAEZv3.0. The public release of these databases and methodologies by IIASA and FAO is scheduled for the middle of 2011. The release will serve as the backbone and launching pad for a set of research proposals building on the analytical capabilities of the updated tool set and corresponding with the five themes listed above.

Doubling Food Provision top

Background: Improving the use and access to the world’s land, water, and ecosystems is critically important, each affecting demand for the others and use of all affecting the climate. Available long-term outlooks assume that increased productivity per unit area will contribute in the order of 90 percent of the required doubling of food production to 2050. An enormous effort is required to achieve such a growth of nearly 1.5% per year, in a context of climate change, regional land and water scarcities, growing competition by non-food uses, and increasing environmental impacts.
Research questions/challenges: Which factors are regionally the most critical/constraining for achieving reliable long-term food and water supply? Which new technologies, investments, policies and institutional innovations could provide greatest benefits for achieving food security, alleviating water scarcity and rural energy poverty. What is the additional demand for land, water, nutrients, energy and finance necessary to achieve sufficient food and water supplies in the next 50 years? What could international agreements contribute to reducing the risks and volatility of food production and trade?
Research approach/activities: Maintaining a global perspective, the project will develop a regional focus.

(i) Typology and spatial datasets of food/water/energy security problem areas: Characterize problem areas with regard to food, water and energy security, e.g. areas where poverty predominates and food requirements of local populations largely exceed the present land and water resource productive capacity; disaster-prone areas where land and water degradation frequently threatens the life of local populations; and areas where inequitable land tenure and/or water rights are the main limiting factors for progress towards food security.

(ii) Yield gap attribution: Spatially detailed estimation and analysis of yield gaps in crop and livestock production. Attribution of yield gaps to key deficiencies and constraining factors. Assessment of the inter-linkages and coincidence of yield gaps with food/water security issues and poverty.

(iii) Sustainable consumption: Explore impacts of behavioural changes in food demand on the environmental footprint of food provision; particularly livestock products, which are more resource demanding and greenhouse gas emissions intensive than other forms of food production.

(iv) Volatility of food networks: Investigate risks of increasingly complex food supply chains.

(v) Spatial decision support for good governance: Develop spatial information system and analysis tools to support stakeholder-led plans and coping strategies that achieve yield gap reduction, increase resource use efficiency, and reduce systems volatility. Develop recommendations for directions of policies and R&D to address main deficiencies of food/water security problem areas.

Linkages: This project, aiming to explore critical factors in future food and water provision and to identify policy options and strategies for improving human livelihoods, has strong linkages to poverty and equity. The project will also directly contribute to FAO’s Global Perspectives work.

Background: A shift away from current economies based primarily on fossil petrochemicals towards bio-based economies, relying to a large extent on renewable energy sources, may be inevitable in the next decades. This requires better understanding and managing competing uses of land, water and ecosystem services, including robust expansion of food and energy production; sustaining regulating ecosystem functions; protecting and preserving global gene pools; and enhancing terrestrial carbon pools. While high potential areas are already widely exploited for agricultural production and forestry or are containing a large fraction of terrestrial carbon and of the global gene pools, there are vast extents of so-called marginal and/or degraded land. Meeting growing population demands for food and energy will also imply more reliance and better management of these areas.

Research questions/challenges: From a global, regional and local perspective, how can large biomass resource potentials be mobilized from scarce land and water resources without jeopardizing food security, increasing deforestation, or endangering vital ecosystem functions? What are the characteristics, the ecological value and current socioeconomic functions of different types of marginal lands? Which limitations of marginal land may be alleviated by modern plant breeding and bio-technology? What are economically viable, environmentally beneficial, and socially acceptable uses of marginal and degraded lands? What are ‘best practices’ in land/water management and use of marginal areas and robust conclusions in view of the ecological characteristics and capabilities of the land? How to regulate, monitor and dynamically adapt use strategies in response to large inherent uncertainties and dynamics of the food and water systems? How to protect the poor and under-privileged in the competition for land, food, energy and water?

Research approach/activities: This project uses a globally consistent methodological framework and drills down to the policy issues by means of selected regional/national case studies involving external collaborators and stakeholders. Project components include:

(i) Develop an appropriate typology and characterize extent, distribution, main limitations and current functions, management regimes and environmental value (e.g., carbon stock, biodiversity) of marginal or degraded land;

(ii) Explore use options for marginal land as to which limitations may be alleviated by modern (bio-) technology to enhance biomass productivity and yield stability of these areas;

(iii) Address major risks and threats of mobilizing biomass resources, e.g. the land grab issue; ‘tragedy of the commons’ syndromes;

(iv) In selected case studies address the issue of social exclusion versus small-holder integration in the bio-based economy; and

(v) Develop a comprehensive and spatially detailed cross-scale modeling framework for providing a knowledge base and decision support tools applicable at national/regional scale on land use competition, featuring cross-sector linkages, cross-scale consistency, and valuation of land/water services (beyond CGE modeling) to suggest forward looking strategies for marginal and degraded lands that are economically viable, environmentally beneficial and socially fair and acceptable.

Linkages: Identify and fill critical gaps in IIASA’s capabilities to understand and model essential ecosystem services (e.g. vegetation modeling, biodiversity, water cycle), particularly for marginal areas. As a key ingredient of sustainable development, this project explores critical factors in integrated resource use and management with strong linkages to rural poverty and equity and with large implications for energy and climate futures. Its regional focus, comprehensive approach, and novel spatial and dynamic decision support tools will ensure good value and relevance to IIASA’s NMOs. Spatial decision support tools will be developed jointly with the Advanced Systems Analysis Area.

Water for Food and Agriculture top

Background: Water, from natural precipitation and irrigation, is the most important driver of agricultural production and its most precious input. Today the irrigated area has expanded to over 270 million hectares worldwide, about 18% of total cultivated land. Agriculture is the largest user of water among human activities: irrigation water withdrawals are 70% of the total anthropogenic use of renewable water resources. Irrigated crops produce about 40% of total agricultural output; their yields are typically twice those of rain-fed crops. Prospects to meet future food demands by further irrigation development are limited by the water demands for human settlements, industry and other uses, by the declining possibilities of tapping additional sources of irrigation water, and often decreasing quality of water resources due to pollution and wastes. Fresh water resources are unevenly distributed. Many countries and locations suffer severe water scarcity for human consumption and food production. What are the prospects and needs of meeting future food demands by irrigation expansion, despite growing competition with other water uses, declining possibilities of tapping additional irrigation sources, and climate change?

Research questions/challenges: Where and how much is irrigation expansion essential to achieving required expansion of regional food supplies? Where, how much, and in what quality is irrigation water demanded and how will this change over the next decades for achieving a doubling of food output by 2050?

Research approach/activities: This project has a regional/watershed focus and will apply a novel spatially detailed methodological framework. In order to achieve practical and policy relevant outcomes a case study approach and stakeholder involvement are essential. Project activities include:

(i) Extension of available land use and food modeling system with an explicit water resources modeling component to further enhance its capability for integrated land and water assessments. Expand GAEZ model system with a water routing scheme at the cropping zone/watershed level for spatially assessing water productivity, water regulation and water management issues;

(ii) Integrate expert knowledge, model results and new datasets to establish a knowledge base of future water demand in agriculture;

(iii) Investigate technological change and diffusion, and assess its impact on agricultural water use over time; and

(iv) Develop and apply in selected case studies a spatially detailed and rigorous systems approach for valuating water services and agricultural use options, testing the effectiveness of non-structural measures (e.g., land management, water harvesting, soil moisture management), and assessing alternative schemes of water use/management/competition (e.g., domestic use, agricultural use, energy use, industrial use).

Linkages: This project falls within the F&W cross-cutting Water research cluster. It will develop regional case studies to inform the project on Adaptive Decision Support for Water Management and links to the project on Doubling Food Provision. The methodological components of spatio-temporal water valuation and decision support tools will be developed jointly with external collaborators and the Advanced Systems Analysis area.

Climate change adaptation of food and water systems top

Background: Global warming in the coming decades seems unavoidable. Food provision, land management, water supply systems, environmental conservation and nature protection will be severely affected. Effective, robust and spatially varied coping strategies to reduce impacts and systemic volatilities need to be developed urgently. Policy issues: Where are food-and-water supply systems most in need of targeted adaptation? What are integrated strategies, financial dimensions, fairness aspects, and poverty implications of adapting food-and-water systems to the challenges of climate change?

Research questions/challenges: What are the spatial (e.g. by agro-ecological zones) and temporal (e.g. in decadal steps) characteristics of adaptation requirements of current land uses (crops, livestock, forestry, nature protection)? Which agro-ecosystems and water services, when, and where are most at risk? What are the requirements and options for land use adaptation to achieve required regional levels of food and water provision in view of climate change? Beyond temperature and moisture regime changes, what are additional key impacts and uncertainties in food and water provision due to climate change, for instance such as altered pest and disease incidence, plant damage due to heat stress and extreme temperature episodes, or enhanced climate variability and extreme events? What are robust investment and management/governance strategies of risk-reducing measures to enhance stability of food and water provision?

Research approach/activities: This project uses a global framework and stratification but will focus its research on regional analyses in order to achieve practical and policy relevant outcomes aimed at integrated decision support and knowledge systems. Main research blocks include:

(i) Based on agro-ecological zones stratification, assess the geographical pattern, magnitude and financial resources required for adaptation of food and water provision in response to climate change;

(ii) Quantify important regional/national co-benefits of adaptation strategies for food, agriculture and water sectors (e.g., pollution reduction, reduced health risks, mitigation of GHG emissions) and highlight economic and environmental co-benefits of integrated climate change adaptation strategies of agriculture, forestry and water sectors;

(iii) Highlight possible risks and surprises in climate change adaptation by investigating what changes of land use and water management a hypothetical rapid transition to an X-degree warmer world would entail;

(iv) As a methodological focus, establish procedures for multi-scale data harmonization, assimilation and data-model fusion in order to bridge spatial scales of observations and modelling tools and to establish exchange and fusion between crop models (at the farm/site level) and spatial agro-ecological models (at the cropping zone level); and

(v) For policy impacts, planning and outreach, establish (regional/national) knowledge and decision support tools enabling integrated cross-sector strategies for adaptation of food and water systems to climate change.

Linkages: This project falls within the cross-cutting climate change mitigation and adaptation F&W research cluster. It links with the project on ‘Adaptive decision support for water management’ and contributes to the projects on ‘Doubling food provision’ and ‘Water for food and agriculture’. The project is also directly related to the 3-year NSFC-IIASA collaboration project on ‘Assessing the Impact of Climate Change and Intensive Human Activities on China’s Agro-Ecosystems and its Supply Potentials’. The methodological components of multi-scale data harmonization and decision support tools will be developed jointly with the Advanced Systems Analysis Area.

Adaptive Decision Support for Water Management top

Background: About one fourth of the world’s population live in areas categorized as physically water scarce and one sixth in areas of economic water scarcity, two billion live without access to sanitation, and one billion without access to improved drinking water sources (UN, 2006).  However, despite regions of serious concern, there are policies for management of water and related resources and systems that could help to remove obstacles to and promote the well-being of populations, economies and eco-systems. 

Objective:  This project aims to integrate IIASA’s expertise in and databases for assessing the drivers of water demand (population, energy, land use and agriculture, forestry and ecosystems), managing risks and uncertainties, multi-objective optimization, and the development of methods and strategies for managing participatory processes into a flexible, modular decision support system for integrated and adaptive management of water resources. 

Method: The approach taken will be to develop methods of integrating easily understood qualitative models of causal relationships with appropriately detailed quantitative models and databases allowing stakeholder groups and decision-makers to understand the integrated impacts of a myriad of management options in real time.  A variety of existing and freely available hydrologic, river routing, and water demand models will be included so that the decision support system is flexible and adaptive by being able to interchange appropriate quantitative models depending on the level of detail of management question being asked and the data available. 

Linkages: Initial focus areas for the development and use of modules for this project will be on topics and research projects already identified by a number of IIASA programs that require integrated assessment of water resources:

Responsible for this page: Elisabeth Kawczynski
Last updated: 08 Jun 2011