Making things fit: Modeling a sustainable, well-fed world in 2050

Background/Question/Methods

Over the next several decades, projections suggest that the world’s population will increase by two billion, dietary preference shifts will lead to a greater demand for meat, and we will need to undergo a dramatic shift in our energy and water economies.  How can we meet the needs of nine billion people on a finite planet without compromising welfare for future generations?  How can we fit all of the competing food, feed and fuel demands of a global community into the space we have available, all while sustainably managing water stocks, stabilizing the carbon cycle, limiting biodiversity loss, and maintaining supporting ecosystem services?  This study uses a combination of systems dynamics conceptual modeling, empirical models and spatial datasets to create scenarios in which we “make it fit” – from global agriculture to feed nine billion, a renewable resource economy, forest carbon sinks to biodiversity hotspots, we explored scenarios that imagine the world in 2050 without the need to crowd anything out.

Results/Conclusions

Central to our results was the need to freeze the world’s agricultural footprint and instead dramatically boost yields on existing cropland and rangeland.  Leaving genetic improvements aside, closing yield gaps on underperforming agricultural land could accommodate the caloric demands of a growing population.  Building from these initial results, and using preexisting knowledge about where on the planet agricultural lands are already located, we spatially explore ways in which key technical innovations and adoptions (particularly concerning energy) could more sustainably allocate land use.  Further, we overlaid those results with water stress models and nutrient loading models to examine how different land use allocations could have a greater or lesser effect on regional resource management.  As we made different assumptions – about technology, about economics, about climate trajectories, about yield – different scenarios emerged in which we could conceivably make it “all” fit.  Ultimately, as we move forward as a planet towards environmental challenges on a grand scale and urgent timeline, we’ll need pathways forward.  We’ve attempted to begin that conversation by imagining potential scenarios that could keep the world green and happy into the latter half of the century.