CLIMA

CLIMA is a research platform seeking to inform Brazilian and international stakeholders on the social and environmental impacts of biofuels expansion in Brazil.

Our platform relies on integrated modelling and interdisciplinary research of energy, land use and water topics. Using a broad set of policy scenarios until 2030 we aim to identify possible synergies between those sectors while avoiding negative trade-offs, for example, impacts on food demand prices due to increasing demand for biofuels. CLIMA covers a broad set of issues, from local to macroeconomic scale: water resources and availability for biofuel feedstock production under drought, potential for food versus fuel competition, or the effectiveness of new second-generation biofuel technologies to mitigate deforestation pressures and other land issues.

Our focus is 2030. Therefore, CLIMA integrates climate impacts on crop productivity to also understand medium-term adaptation needs in biofuels and agriculture sectors.

The research is organized along five specific lines:

1. Projecting agricultural productivity under increasing climate change
2. Estimations of biofuels expansion and land use change through 2030
3. Basin scale modelling of water flows in regions with significant biofuels expansion
4. Macroeconomic impacts of biofuels expansion on welfare and food security
5. Research on community perspectives on land use change and biofuels

CLIMA is funded by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB) through its International Climate Initiative (IKI). The platform is located at the Alberto Luiz Coimbra Institute: Graduate School and Research in Engineering (COPPE) of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). It is comprised of the Center for Integrated Studies on Climate Change and Environment (Centro Clima) at UFRJ (Dr. Martin Obermaier, Prof. Emilio Lèbre La Rovere), Agroicone Ltda. (Dr. Rodrigo Lima, Marcelo Moreira), and The University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin) Energy Institute (Dr. Carey King) and Bureau of Economic Geology (Dr. Bridget Scanlon) of the Jackson School of Geosciences.