Development of an integrated indicator to assess the multi-dimensional global environmental impact of crop production.

Abstract:

Due to increased demand for food, feed, fibre and fuels, intensive resource-use for crop production causes depletion of finite natural resources imperils ecosystems’ integrity. Environmental sustainability is a major global challenge, as identified by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which indicate environmental protection, and higher food production (to end hunger and achieve food security and nutrition), as key goals. As such, the need to measure the environmental sustainability of agriculture globally is imperative to aid decision making for long term, multidisciplinary policy and research programs.

Composite indicators are popular tools to assess environmental performance due to their operational relevance in policy-making. However, the reliability of a composite indicator heavily depends not only on the meaningfulness and accuracy of the indicators embedded within, but also on the underlying methods used to construct the composite indicator. This research takes advantage of new spatially-explicit estimates of environmental impacts of global agriculture due to the use of fertiliser, water, land-use and emissions of greenhouse gases to build an integrated environmental sustainability indicator. Different constructions of a meaningful composite indicator are formed and assessed for their sensitivity to varying biophysical and resource input factors.

The tool will be used to analyse hotspots for environmental impacts and resource intensities, providing the initial analysis to aid institutions and governments at the strategic level to compare their level of sustainability, thus encouraging improvement of standards/ranking against other regions and implement drivers for behaviour and change. The study opens the opportunity to provide sustainable food production frameworks globally, group regions and analysis trade-offs/synergies between environmental impacts. Furthermore, by using emerging environmental datasets, this work generates new knowledge and understanding of globally significant environmental processes and profile these policy relevant insights; a process that is increasingly important for global agendas such as the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.