Substitutability and irreversibility are core concepts of sustainability. Food, soil and water cannot be substituted for, and extinct species are gone forever. Natural resources are therefore at the centre of any discussion on sustainability. But potential measures to reduce environmental pressure also affect natural resources, for example if forests are used as carbon sinks or agricultural land to grow biofuels. Indeed, in the near future climate change - and measures against climate change - will affect all sectors and activities, including forestry and terrestrial biodiversity. Forests will suffer new stresses due to a changing environment, and the same will be true for entire spectrum of animals and plants living in terrestrial ecosystems.

Four activities were developed, each building on previous and ongoing projects funded by DG Research and other agencies. Firstly, the linkage between economy-environment models and natural resources models were investigated. In particular, the GTAP community CGE model and the global land and water use model developed in Hamburg and Venice were applied to questions of scarcity of food and water. Alternative scenarios of population growth and technological progress, and policy scenarios on environmental regulation and other issue (e.g., trade liberalisation) were used. Secondly, trade-offs between the growing of food and biofuels, and reduction of carbon in the EU, candidate countries and neighbouring countries were analysed. In this as well as other contexts, the EU-FASOM model was used again to analyse alternative scenarios of environmental regulation as well as other developments (e.g., further enlargement, CAP reform). Thirdly, the inclusion of biodiversity will be studied. In particular, the possibility of extending existing models to include a simple model of biodiversity was investigated, so that the trade-offs between human expansion (particularly in developing countries) and nature on a global scale, and between food / fuel / carbon and nature on a European scale can be explored. Fourthly, special attention was given to the issue of CCS (carbon capture and storage)

Many existing efforts to include a range of natural resources in environment/economy models are as yet unlinked or only partially linked, and this task aims to bring them together.

• The overview and assessment of existing modelling approaches in the context of natural resources, with a focus on land, water and biodiversity.
• The assessment of existing attempts to link natural resources to environment/economy models, and of their potential for a wider applicability (according to the ideas outlined above).
• The identification of data requirements and conceptual problems in order to outline directions for future research.

• Energy and Emissions: Local and Global Effects of the Giants’ Rise
• Assessing Climate Change Impacts: Agriculture
• CO2 Capture and Storage with Leakage in an Energy-Climate Model
• The Economics of Geological CO2 Storage and Leakage
• Carbon Sequestration with Reforestations and Biodiversity-scenic Values
• Land Use and Carbon Mitigation in Europe: A Survey of the Potentials of Different Alternatives
• The Role of Water Resources in Agricultural Land Use Modeling: AN Extension of the Land Use Model KLUM
• Modeling Linkages between Climate Policy and Land-Use: An Overview
• Biofuels and Climate Policy

UniHH (lead), ECN, IfW, FEEM, CSIC