title: The Contribution of Agriculture, Forestry and other Land Use activities to Global Warming, 1990-2012.
abstract: We refine the information available through the IPCC AR5 with regard to recent trends in global GHG emissions from agriculture, forestry and other land uses (AFOLU), including global emission updates to 2012. Using all three available AFOLU datasets employed for analysis in the IPCC AR5, rather than just one as done in the IPCC AR5 WGIII Summary for Policy Makers, our analyses point to a down-revision of global AFOLU shares of total anthropogenic emissions, while providing important additional information on subsectoral trends. Our findings confirm that the share of AFOLU emissions to the anthropogenic total declined over time. They indicate a decadal average of 28.7 ± 1.5% in the 1990s and 23.6 ± 2.1% in the 2000s and an annual value of 21.2 ± 1.5% in 2010. The IPCC AR5 had indicated a 24% share in 2010. In contrast to previous decades, when emissions from land use (land use, land use change and forestry, including deforestation) were significantly larger than those from agriculture (crop and livestock production), in 2010 agriculture was the larger component, contributing 11.2 ± 0.4% of total GHG emissions, compared to 10.0 ± 1.2% of the land use sector. Deforestation was responsible for only 8% of total anthropogenic emissions in 2010, compared to 12% in the 1990s. Since 2010, the last year assessed by the IPCC AR5, new FAO estimates indicate that land use emissions have remained stable, at about 4.8 Gt CO2eq yr-1in 2012. Emissions minus removals have also remained stable, at 3.2 Gt CO2eq yr-1in 2012. By contrast, agriculture emissions have continued to grow, at roughly 1% annually, and remained larger than the land use sector, reaching 5.4 Gt CO2eq yr-1in 2012. These results are useful to further inform the current climate policy debate on land use, suggesting that more efforts and resources should be directed to further explore options for mitigation in agriculture, much in line with the large efforts devoted to REDD+ in the past decade.
authors.affiliation: Climate, Energy and Tenure Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Via Terme di Caracalla, Rome, 00153, Italy.
authors.forename: Francesco N
authors.initials: FN
authors.lastname: Tubiello
authors.affiliation: Climate, Energy and Tenure Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Via Terme di Caracalla, Rome, 00153, Italy.
authors.forename: Mirella
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Salvatore
authors.affiliation: Climate, Energy and Tenure Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Via Terme di Caracalla, Rome, 00153, Italy.
authors.forename: Alessandro F
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: Ferrara
authors.affiliation: School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, University Road, Bristol, BS8 1SS, UK.
authors.forename: Jo
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: House
authors.affiliation: Climate, Energy and Tenure Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Via Terme di Caracalla, Rome, 00153, Italy.
authors.forename: Sandro
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Federici
authors.affiliation: Climate, Energy and Tenure Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Via Terme di Caracalla, Rome, 00153, Italy.|European Commission Joint Research Center, Ispra, VA, 28100, Italy.
authors.forename: Simone
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rossi
authors.affiliation: Climate, Energy and Tenure Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Via Terme di Caracalla, Rome, 00153, Italy.
authors.forename: Riccardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Biancalani
authors.affiliation: Climate, Energy and Tenure Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Via Terme di Caracalla, Rome, 00153, Italy.
authors.forename: Rocio D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Condor Golec
authors.affiliation: Climate, Energy and Tenure Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Via Terme di Caracalla, Rome, 00153, Italy.
authors.forename: Heather
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Jacobs
authors.affiliation: Climate, Energy and Tenure Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Via Terme di Caracalla, Rome, 00153, Italy.
authors.forename: Alessandro
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Flammini
authors.affiliation: Climate, Energy and Tenure Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Via Terme di Caracalla, Rome, 00153, Italy.
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Prosperi
authors.affiliation: Climate, Energy and Tenure Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Via Terme di Caracalla, Rome, 00153, Italy.
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Cardenas-Galindo
authors.affiliation: Statistics Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Via Terme di Caracalla, Rome, 00153, Italy.
authors.forename: Josef
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schmidhuber
authors.affiliation: Forest Management Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Via Terme di Caracalla, Rome, 00153, Italy.
authors.forename: Maria J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Sanz Sanchez
authors.affiliation: IPCC Task Force on National GHG Inventories, IGES, 2108-11 Kamiyamaguchi Hayama, Kanagawa, Japan.
authors.forename: Nalin
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Srivastava
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences, School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen, 23 St Machar Drive, Room G45, Aberdeen, AB24 3UU, UK.
authors.forename: Pete
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Smith
keywords: 
  AFOLU
  ; 
  GHG
  ; Agriculture; Climate Change; Emissions; Mitigation