Abstract
The means of addressing greenhouse gas emissions related to building and transport energy use, urban form, and waste are technically straightforward, even if socially and politically challenging. Tackling these areas successfully would go a long way toward mitigating the emissions load that cities impose on the global ecosystem. However, cities also lie at the root of an additional important source of emissions—deforestation and changes in land use—and these drivers are both under-appreciated and perhaps more problematic to address.
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Notes
- 1.
Union of Concerned Scientists, “Deforestation and Global Warming,” 2013, citing work by Winrock International and Woods Hole Research Center, www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/stop-deforestation/deforestation-global-warming-carbon-emissions.html; Ruth DeFries et al., “Deforestation Driven by Urban Population Growth and Agricultural Trade in the Twenty-first Century,” Nature GeoScience 3 (2010): 178–81.
- 2.
Eric Lambin and Patrick Meyfroidt, “Global Land Use Change, Economic Globalization, and the Looming Land Scarcity,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 9 (2011): 3,465–72; DeFries et al., “Deforestation Driven by Urban Population Growth and Agricultural Trade in the Twenty-first Century.” Figure 14–1 from the following sources: per capita gross national income, in constant 2005 U.S. dollars, from World Bank Databank, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.KD; per capita meat availability from United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), extract prepared by Tomasz Filipczuk from http://faostat3.fao.org/download/FB/CL/.
- 3.
Doug Boucher et al., The Root of the Problem: What’s Driving Tropical Deforestation Today (Cambridge, MA: Union of Concerned Scientists, 2011).
- 4.
City population growth from Andy Gouldson et al., Accelerating Low-Carbon Development in the World’s Cities, New Climate Economy Working Paper (Washington, DC: Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, 2015); city population estimate in 2050 from Karen Seto et al., “Urban Land Teleconnections and Sustainability,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 20 (2012): 7,687–92; urban land area expansion from Karen Seto, Burak Güneralp, and Lucy R. Hutyra, “Global Forecasts of Urban Expansion to 2030 and Direct Impacts on Biodiversity and Carbon Pools,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 40 (2012): 16,083–88; farmland loss from Lambin and Meyfroidt, “Global Land Use Change, Economic Globalization, and the Looming Land Scarcity.”
- 5.
Jim Robbins, “Deforestation and Drought, New York Times, October 11, 2015, SR7; Antonio Donato Nobre, The Future Climate of Amazonia, Scientific Assessment Report sponsored by CCST-INPE, INPA and ARA (São Paulo: 2014).
- 6.
FAO, Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015 (Rome: 2015), 14; Will Steffen et al., “Planetary Boundaries: Guiding Human Development on a Changing Planet,” Science 47, no. 6223 (2015).
- 7.
Seto et al., “Urban Land Teleconnections and Sustainability,” 7,687.
- 8.
Lambin and Meyfroidt, “Global Land Use Change, Economic Globalization, and the Looming Land Scarcity.”
- 9.
Ibid.; Wanqing Zhou, The Triangle: The Evolution and Future of Industrial Animal Agriculture in the U.S., China and Brazil (New York: Brighter Green, 2015).
- 10.
Lambin and Meyfroidt, “Global Land Use Change, Economic Globalization, and the Looming Land Scarcity”; C. Nellemann et al., The Environmental Food Crisis: The Environment’s Role in Averting Future Food Crises (Arendal, Norway: United Nations Environment Programme/GRID-Arendal, 2009).
- 11.
Lambin and Meyfroidt, “Global Land Use Change, Economic Globalization, and the Looming Land Scarcity.”
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Ibid., 3,471.
- 14.
Edward Glaeser and Joshua Gottlieb, The Wealth of Cities: Agglomeration Economies and Spatial Equilibrium in the United States, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 14806 (Cambridge, MA: November 2011); Michael Hermann and David Svarin, Environmental Pressures and Rural-Urban Migration: The Case of Bangladesh (Munich: UNCTAD/Munich Personal RePEc Archive paper, January 2009; Simon Fairlie, “A Short History of Enclosure in Britain,” The Land 7 (Summer 2009).
- 15.
World Bank, “Remittances Growth to Slow Sharply in 2015, as Europe and Russia Stay Weak; Pick-up Expected Next Year,” press release (Washington, DC: April 13, 2015).
- 16.
See, for example, Walden Bello, The Food Wars (London: Verso, 2009), 11 and ff. Box 15–1 based on Chris Smaje, “Three Urban Myths,” Small Farm Future blog, March 30, 2014, and on Chris Smaje, “The Ungreen City—Or the Polluting Countryside?” Significance (Royal Statistical Society) 8, no. 2 (2011): 61–64.
- 17.
Felix Creutzig, personal communication with author, July 26, 2015; Glaeser and Gottlieb, The Wealth of Cities, 3, 50–51.
- 18.
FAO, Global Food Losses and Food Waste: Extent, Losses, and Prevention (Rome: 2011); Michael Hamm, “City Region Food Systems – Part 1 – Conceptualization,” Food Climate Research Network blog, May 20, 2015; Zhou, The Triangle.
- 19.
Brian Machovina et al., “Biodiversity Conservation: The Key Is Reducing Meat Consumption,” Science of the Total Environment 536 (December 1, 2015): 419–31.
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Prugh, T. (2016). Rural-Urban Migration, Lifestyles, and Deforestation. In: State of the World. State of the World. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-756-8_22
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