Global Impacts: Measuring the Impact of UK Consumption on Biodiversity Overseas

1. Global Impacts: Measuring the Impact of UK Consumption on Biodiversity Overseas Chris West, Elena Dawkins, Simon Croft, David Raffaelli, William Sheate 6th December 2012

2. Outline of Global Impacts Session

3. Defra Project Background • Project Duration: Nov2011 – March 2013 • The Issue • Growing consumption, increasing reliance on imports • Complex supply chains • Indirect and direct impacts of consumption • Overseas biodiversity impacts • Project Aim • provide a database-driven methodology for linking UK imports to geographically-defined impacts on biodiversity

4. Existing studies

5. Existing studies

6. Defra Project Background • Our approach: • Understanding consumption: • Measuring trade and supply chains • Linking production abroad with imports to the UK • Understanding potential biodiversity impacts: • Selecting indicators of biodiversity • Linking indicators to production abroad

7. Understanding Trade and Consumption Trade information: • Import, export data exists from HMRC, FAO, UN, Eurostat, OECD... • Physical • Financial • Input-Output (IO) tables map interactions between industry throughout the whole economy. They are necessary to measure indirect/embedded materials within products. They capture the full supply chains of goods. • We selected GTAP data based on the criteria: • Availability (current and likely future) • Number of regions covered vsno. of sectors covered • Regularly updated • New version just released

8. MRIO data GTAP/MRIO approach: • Financial flows between 129 countries (multi-regional), across 57 sectors. • Interactions between economic sectors (all inputs and outputs of whole economy) mapped out in tables (input-output). • Limitations: • Limited sector resolution • Released every 4 years (latest version has 2004 and 2007 data) • Financial flows not physical quantities

9. Linking to detailed production data • FAO: • Agriculture stats: yield, area harvested, production and trade flowsfor 236 Countries and over 600 products • ForeSTAT: production, import, export for wood product groups • FishSTAT: total capture, aquaculture, commodities, production and trade • This is more detailed than the financial data, but lacks information about full supply chains. • We need a method to link detailed product data to the full supply-chain in input-output models…

10. Diagram of MRIO physical model adapted from: Brad R. Ewing, Troy R. Hawkins, Thomas O. Wiedmann, Alessandro Galli, A. ErtugErcin, Jan Weinzettel, Kjartan Steen-Olsen, Integrating ecological and water footprint accounting in a multi-regional input–output framework, Ecological Indicators, Volume 23, December 2012, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X12000714

11. Linking production data to MRIO • Method 1: Allocate physical production of each product and country within FAO to an equivalent producing sector and region within GTAP • Relies solely on financial MRIO data to model trade in commodities between sectors • Method 2: Allocate physical production to importing regions in GTAP • Hybrid approach; requires harmonisation of datasets and method for dealing with re-exports in the physical data • Method 3: Allocate physical production to regions and sectors in GTAP • Retains product detail to greatest extent but requires seed and feed data

12. FAO Trade Data DEFRA MODEL UK Demand for products with ‘embedded’ soybeans Exports of soybeans to UK • What it tells you: • Exports of raw materials/commodities to a country. • What it doesn’t tell you: • Where the final/processed products end up, and whether they are re-exported • Any ‘hidden’ impacts embedded in products e.g. soya embedded in meat products • What it tells you: • Impacts (land associated with soybean production in this case) associated with demand for any products (including ‘hidden’ land embedded in products).

13. Linking production quantity to impact • Environmental ‘extensions’ can be added to the production data: • From FAO we have details on yields by country and can therefore calculate land requirements • We also have data on water consumption and pollution (in the form of form of green, blue, and grey water • Some fertiliser data is available • IUCN RedList, Important Bird Area databases contain information about species threats • Other regional information about endemism, habitat types etc. • These extensions can be viewed in isolation or potentially combined.

14. Physical production linked to environmental drivers of biodiversity loss and indicators Sectors linked to physical production and land use data – sector level (e.g. fruit and veg, not mangos)

15. Method Summary • Defra model enables a detailed look at products and land use/ water/ biodiversity impacts etc. of those products. • Benefits of Defra Model: • Retains product-level detail of FAO. Combines FAO physical data with MRIO financial flow data. • Calculates all of the ‘hidden’/embedded impacts in products that might be missed in just direct import/export data of the actual commodity (e.g. captures soya imported via meat products). • Assesses impacts associated with the final consumption of products, compared to FAO trade data where commodities are likely to go into industry (rather than final consumers) and be processed and either consumed or re-exported elsewhere. • Defra model: • Still under development, builds on work from OPEN-EU project, adds additional datasets and indicators for anything associated with production of commodities. • Initial results are starting to become available for UK demand….

16. Case Studies and Knowledge Base • The Hybrid-MRIO model still only contains information to country-level. • To validate the model, and provide further regionally-specific information we are conducting case studies on Brazilian soybeans and shrimps (probably from Asia). • It is intended that this approach can be used to drill-down into potential impact ‘hotspots’ inferred in the model.

17. Preliminary results • The following results are (very!) preliminary and therefore only for illustration: • Based on Method 1 (allocating products from FAO to producing sectors in GTAP). • Available for only a handful of commodities at present. • Some outstanding data issues (e.g. with China data in FAO). • Biodiversity extensions are undergoing further work.

18. Soybean consumption by the UK (2007) ‘Raw’ data from FAO shows direct imports of soybeans into the UK by exporting country: Running the data through the hybrid-MRIO model gives us this:

19. Soybean consumption by the UK (2007) We can also look at how demand for different sectors contributes to this production:

20. Beyond Production: Top Ten: Seed cotton consumption by the UK (2007) We can also look at how demand for different sectors contributes to this production:

21. Beyond Production: Seed cotton consumption by the UK (2007)

22. Related ongoing and future work • By SEI: • JNCC/SNH project on material flow analysis for Scottish Biomass and links to biodiversity impacts • WWF European Policy Office: EU Policy and consumption-related impacts on WWF Priority Areas for conservation (feasibility study) • By others: • Manfred Lenzen’s group in Australia • WWF China

23. Thank you!