Dresden 2017 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme
SOE 6: Poster
SOE 6.18: Poster
Montag, 20. März 2017, 17:00–20:00, P2-OG4
Optimization of urban food networks and its climate benefits — •Prajal Pradhan1, Steffen Kriewald1, Luis Costa1, and Jürgen Kropp1,2 — 1Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Potsdam, Germany — 2University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
By 2050, urban population share grow to 65%. Therefore, feeding the growing urban population is crucial to ensure local, regional and global food security. However, food is mostly grown in nonurban regions. This reflects interdependency of hinterlands and urban areas in food production and consumption, which can be considered as urban foodshed.
We analyze urban foodshed for 7000 urban administrative units (UAUs) across the globe and estimate greenhouse gas emissions related to food transport applying two different methods: i) globalized agricultural trade where food is brought from an arbitrary site, ii) an optimization scenario where food demands are met by UAUs' peripheral regions. We also account for reduction of food waste and closing of crop yield gaps to understand their impacts on both globalization and optimization scenarios.
Our results show that mean distance, total distance, net food transport, net food transport distance and associated greenhouse gas emissions are lower for most UAUs in the optimization scenario compared to the globalization scenario. Our analyses on food waste reduction and yield gaps closing also result in lower estimates. Hence, our study provides new insights on required measures to decrease urban foodshed and to reduce emissions related to food transport.