Cost-Effective Mitigation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the Agriculture of Aragon, Spain

Safa Baccour, Jose Albiac and Taher Kahil
Additional contact information
Safa Baccour: Department of Agricultural Economics, CITA-IA2, 50059 Saragossa, Spain
Jose Albiac: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria
Taher Kahil: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 3, 1-19

Abstract: Climate change represents a serious threat to life in earth. Agriculture releases significant emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), but also offers low-cost opportunities to mitigate GHG emissions. This paper assesses agricultural GHG emissions in Aragon, one important and representative region for agriculture in Spain. The Marginal Abatement Cost Curve (MACC) approach is used to analyze the abatement potential and cost-efficiency of mitigation measures under several scenarios, with and without taking into account the interaction among measures and their transaction costs. The assessment identifies the environmental and economic outcomes of different combinations of measures, including crop, livestock and forest measures. Some of these measures are win-win, with pollution abatement at negative costs to farmers. Moreover, we develop future mitigation scenarios for agriculture toward the year 2050. Results highlight the trade-offs and synergies between the economic and environmental outcomes of mitigation measures. The biophysical processes underlying mitigation efforts are assessed taking into account the significant effects of interactions between measures. Interactions reduce the abatement potential and worsen the cost-efficiency of measures. The inclusion of transaction costs provides a better ranking of measures and a more accurate estimation of implementation costs. The scenario analysis shows how the combinations of measures could reduce emissions by up to 75% and promote sustainable agriculture in the future.

Keywords: climate change; mitigation measures; biophysical processes; cost-efficiency; abatement costs; transaction costs; policy scenarios (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/3/1084/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/3/1084/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:3:p:1084-:d:487261

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().