Confronting the Food-Energy-Environment Trilemma: Global Land Use in the Long Run∗

This study analyzes the optimal allocation of the world’s land resources over the course of the next century within a dynamic forwardlooking framework, which brings together distinct strands of economic, agronomic, and biophysical literature and incorporates key drivers affecting global land-use. We show that, while some deforestation is optimal in the near term, the desirability of further deforestation is eliminated by mid-century under the baseline scenario. While adverse productivity shocks from climate change have a modest effect on global land use, when combined with high growth in energy prices this leads to significant deforestation and higher GHG emissions than in the baseline. Imposition of a GHG emissions constraint further heightens the competition for land, as fertilizer use declines and land-based mitigation strategies expand. However, the effectiveness of such a pre-announced constraint is largely diluted by inter-temporal substitution of deforestation which accelerates prior to imposition of the target. JEL: C61, Q15, Q23, Q26, Q40, Q54