Historical deforestation due to expansion of crop demand: implications for biofuels
The report presents an independent estimate of the part of LUC emissions due to deforestation, starting from the 29% of
historical deforestation area (and estimated emissions) caused by expansion of different crops. The deforestation area
and emissions per tonne of extra crop are converted to emissions per MJ biofuel from that crop. The average global
deforestation caused by increase in production of a crop or biofuel is estimated, making no geographical differentiation in
where the extra demand occurs or where that would provoke deforestation.
The source of historical deforestation data is a report published by DG ENV [EC 2013] which estimates which areas of
forest were lost to different crops and to other land uses (grazing, logged forest, urban and others) between 1990 and
2008. It used historical deforestation data from FAO’s Forest Resource Assessment 2010, interpreted with other FAO data.
The emissions are calculated only from deforestation and peat forest drainage, attributed to each MJ biofuel. This does
not include emissions from the grassland area converted to cropland.
This method gives an independent verification of the general magnitude of LUC area and emissions which should be
expected from bottom-up models of LUC for scenarios, and the results indicate that historical LUC emissions were higher
than those estimated by most economic models.
EDWARDS Robert;
PADELLA Monica;
VORKAPIC Veljko;
MARELLI Luisa;
2015-02-16
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC83819
978-92-79-45810-1,
978-92-79-45809-5 (online),
1018-5593,
1831-9424 (online),
EUR 27118,
OP LD-NA-27118-EN-C,
OP LD-NA-27118-EN-N (online),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC83819,
10.2790/92967,
10.2790/02220 (online),
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