Adaptation and Mitigation in AFOLU and Food Systems Research groups

BC3’s Adaptation and Mitigation in AFOLU (Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use) and Food Systems research line aims to generate actionable knowledge to support the socially efficient allocation of land resources, balancing their long-term conservation with their ongoing utilization. The research evaluates adaptation mechanisms and mitigation opportunities, bridging local realities with global climate targets to ensure sustainable, technically robust, and socially just transitions across terrestrial ecosystems and food systems.

Background

Terrestrial ecosystems, the AFOLU sector, and global food systems play an essential role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the targets of the Paris Agreement. However, sustainable ecosystem management is required to reconcile complex future challenges: providing the basic ecosystem services and food security that support human societies, while simultaneously conserving habitats, preserving biodiversity, and acting as a mechanism to mitigate and adapt to climate change. To address these challenges, this research line uses a complementary set of approaches, including mathematical modelling, large-scale data analysis, field observations, and participatory methods to consider the interplay of social, economic, and environmental factors.

Research Interests

To drive systemic socio-ecological transitions, BC3’s research focuses on integrated transformation pathways for food systems, covering the entire agri-food value chain from production and supply to consumption patterns, while assessing trade-offs between emission reductions and food security through real-world case studies and multi-level collaboration. The research also advances technical refinement and accounting metrics for sectoral mitigation, improving methodologies to estimate greenhouse gas and nitrogen emissions and developing high-precision monitoring tools aligned with national and international inventories. In parallel, BC3 models systemic resilience and socio-ecological transitions in agricultural and livestock systems using advanced modelling tools, integrating expert and local knowledge to strengthen adaptation and resilience strategies. A further priority is quantifying the role of land systems in achieving the Paris Agreement goals, particularly through robust assessments of carbon sinks in the FOLU sector to inform net-zero pathways, national NDCs and global climate processes. Finally, BC3 investigates the social and ecological dimensions of land-use change, integrating theoretical and empirical approaches to explore biodiversity–climate linkages across temporal, spatial and organisational scales.