Expected Results

Contribution and steps towards the expected impacts

The first expected impact of CC-TAME is “Assessment of the efficiency of current and future land use adaptation and mitigation processes, including carbon sinks and biomass/-fuel production”. This impact will be achieved by assessing the effectiveness of land-use and climate policies, the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the respective policy instruments to implement these policies, and finally on effectiveness of the biophysical management measures of the very adaptation and mitigation processes. This will be achieved by using a cluster of leading biophysical and socio-economic models, which are linked to climate models in order to also assess the resulting feedback on the climate system from future land use change.

CC-TAME tools will assess efficiencies of mitigation and adaptation processes on farm/forest management practice level as well as on the sectoral level taking into account emerging technological changes in the land-use sector and its associated up-stream industries. Particular emphasis will be devoted to the bioenergy and biorefinery sectors as these are thought to become major drivers of land-use change due to climate policies. By combining regional climate models with biophysical ecosystem management models and with state of the art bottom-up type economic sector models embedded in the theory of modern welfare economics the CC-TAME model cluster is ideally suited to perform efficiency assessment of policies and policy instruments and their associated policy processes. Biophysical extreme events will be assessed with stochastic farm/forest enterprise models using financial theory, based on cutting edge methodologies developed at IIASA and METLA and in coordination with internationally leading research groups in Europe and the US.

The technologically explicit bottom-up approach on the farm/forest management practice level in combination with full fledged sector analysis allows the CC-TAME consortium to assess “The efficiency of current and future land-use adaptation and mitigation processes” on various levels of aggregation (incl. market impacts) and geographic detail.

The following impacts will be generated:

1. Effectiveness of the current Kyoto approach in terms of real impact on land management, i.e., whether it has lead to incentives “at the margin” to landowners. Based on this, recommendations will be made for an improved approach that may entice countries to implement such incentives more broadly in the future.
2. Efficiencies by individual land-use practice (e.g., fertilisation, tillage, thinning etc…) will be assessed taking into account model and parameter uncertainties as well as expert judgement;
3. Efficiencies of land use and land-use change measures (e.g., bioenergy plantations, wetland conservation) will be assessed in the light of various scenario assumptions using deterministic and stochastic approaches;
4. Economic efficiencies (Multi-sectoral Cost-Benefit-Assessment and/or risk reduction) of competing land-uses will be assessed in a simultaneous manner by competitive economic potentials;
5. Efficiency of policy instruments (e.g., subsidies, auctioning of environmental services, taxes) using normative and predictive models;
6. Effectiveness of climate policies, both at international and domestic levels, with respect to political implementability and acceptability will be discussed;

The second expected impact of CC-TAME is “Identification of the adaptation induced by policies, in particular by the Common Agricultural Policy, Rural development Strategy, EU Forestry Strategy and Forest Action Plan, and in general EU policies on climate change”. Due to the management structure of CC-TAME and the types of tools selected, analytical support for “intra-land-use sector” policy coordination receives highest priority. Many of the CC-TAME models have a working history to inform European and national policy makers on potential adaptations induced by policy covering all policy areas mentioned above. The identification of adaptations performed in CC-TAME range from changes in management practices due to regulation all the way to changes in relative competitiveness of certain products due to adaptation of market prices. The entire range of such adaptations will be scoped, identified, quantified, understood, predicted with CC-TAME tools, interpreted, evaluated and summarized to be disseminated and communicated. Since CC-TAME tools are rooted in either modern welfare theory, mico-economic theory or financial theory, normative economic assessment can be carried out in order to identify of the optimal point of incidence for policies.

The AROPAj, CAPRI and FASOM models have a long history to provide policy advice to DG-AGRI on issues concerting the CAP, Rural Development Strategy and climate policies. Even though the future of the CAP in the coming decades is impossible to predict there is a clear tendency since the MacSharry reform of 1992 away from traditional support of agricultural production towards a remuneration of green services. It may be expected therefore that traditional support from CAP Pillar 1 will decrease or come with binding cross-compliance obligations only in the future. The rural development Pillar 2 will likely be strengthened and support environmentally friendly adaptations. The GFM and BEAVER models are currently involved in a study commissioned by the Standing Forestry Committee of the EU assessing the competitiveness of European Forestry and the forest sector in relation to the EU Forestry Strategy and the Forest Action Plan. Results of FASOM, AROPAj and GFM have been presented by DG ENV and DG RTD at various COP and SBSTA plenaries and side events to the UNFCCC. The GFM model was also used to quantify sink enhancement for the recent DG ENV green paper on Post-Kyoto Strategies. FORMICA and GFM were used for a Post-Kyoto strategy study conducted by the German EPA. JR is one of the leading institutions providing advice to government and international organizations on LULUCF policy issues with an unparalleled track record and international network. Thus, the CC-TAME model cluster has a proven record on successful policy impact and many CC-TAME partners are recognized scientists (e.g., IPCC) or policy advisers in the fields mentioned above and in particular the UNFCCC process.

European Impact and Value Added

for Modelling of Air Pollution and Climate Strategies” (EC4MACS) which will provide the linkage to other sectors (energy (PRIMES, POLES models), air pollution (RAINS/GAINS model) and the Macro-economy through the GEM-E3 model). CC-TAME models (FASOM, CAPRI, BEWHERE, GFM, EPIC, DNDC) are already represented in this consortium, which will guarantee strong policy linkage to the EC. Thus, the desired policy impact on European level of CC-TAME is guaranteed through strong linkage within the EC4MACS consortium.

Policy relevant research has been conduced and will be continued during the CC-TAME project for a number of DGs such as ENV, AGRI, RTD, TREN and JRC. CC-TAME partners also have agreements and working relationships with the European Environment Agency on collaboration in the field of bioenergy, climate mitigation and adaptation in the land-use sector. Forestry sector issues will be coordinated with the EU Standing forest Committee and the UNECE Timber committee to which CC-TAME partners have excellent working relations.
The consortium partners are also well networked in the ERA and participated or are still participating in CC-TAME related European projects like ENSEMBES, PRUDENCE, INSEA, CAPRI-DYNASPAT, NitroEUROPE, NOFRETETE, CARBOEUROPE, SEAMLESS, SENSOR, EFORWOOD, SILVISTRAT, ENFA, EPOBIO….In addition, some partners were successful to be rewarded grants from the European Science Foundation in the field of mitigation and adaptation of climate change in the land-use sector.

CC-TAME participants also contributed substantially to the mitigation and adaptation work in forestry and agriculture under the ECCP.

Links to national and international research activities

All partners have and are conducting basic research as well as policy related research in the area of mitigation and adaptation to climate change in their respective home countries. These range from an Austrian excellence project investigating functional microbal diversity in litter decomposition all the way to a UK sponsored global policy study on the perspectives of forest sinks, bioenergy and avoided deforestation. CAPRI contributed to a recent study for DG ENV investigating trade offs and co-benefits of various promising measures on gaseous emissions on the one hand (in particular NH3, N2O, CH4) and nitrate leaching on the other.

With respect to international basic research and policy relevant research we would like to mention that CC-TAME participants strongly participated in various chapters of the IPCC AR4 on both mitigation and adaptation and were leading experts for the UNFCCC as inter alia country reviews or served on the CDM Executive Board. They also had key roles in the IPCC Special Report LULUCF, IPCC Good Practice Guidance LULUCF 2003, and the IPCC 2006 Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories.

CC-TAME members wrote the first approved baseline and monitoring methodology for CDM afforestation and reforestation projects, and were in charge of the Project Design Document for the first and only registered forestry project under the Kyoto Protocol. Futher one of the CD-TAME teams is currently leading a consortium to undertake JI projects in the LULUCF sector in Eastern Europe (Romania and Russia), and holds a key advisory role to the World Bank’s BioCarbon Fund.

CC-TAME partners are leading and participate in the Terrestrial Carbon Cycle Management Project under the Global Carbon Project of the IGBP-IHDP-WCRP-DIVERSITAS. The TCCM-P aims at the assessment of intervention options in the global carbon cycle. The project employs and compares a variety of global/regional process-based models on the biophysical side (e.g., EPIC, CENTURY, TSUBIMO, GFM). CC-TAME participants are also represented in the Energy Modelling Forum (EMF) coodinated by Standford University and sponsored by US EPA, DG ENV and NIES (Japan). The EMF coodinated policy relevant research in the fields of climate, energy and land-use policy to generate consistent scenarios for IPCC. Within EMF, work between the US and the EU FASOM group is co-odinated and NIES from Japan has decided to build ASIA FASOM with the help of CC-TAME partners. Consistent and comparable FASOM land-use scenarios generated on different continents (CC-TAME for Europe) would constitute a major international impact of CC-TAME. Likewise within the EMF co-ordination work has started to generate consistent biophysical EPIC scenarios. Also on forest sector modelling comparative studies between US groups and GFM have been conducted.

In addition to policy related research for governmental organisations, CC-TAME partners have good working relations with or are conducting studies for environmental and business NGOs ranging from the World Wildlife Fund to the Confederation of European Paper Industries.