Large-scale afforestation/reforestation (AR) represents one of the most cost-effective approaches for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and is therefore a central component of Paris-aligned land and energy transformation pathways. Using a dynamic land- and energy-system model, we assess the emergent biodiversity side effects and energy-system adjustments under varying scales of AR in Paris-aligned pathways. We show that increasing scales of AR markedly affect both the extent and pattern of habitat loss. While stringent climate action that avoids further conversion of forest and non-forest ecosystems offers substantial biodiversity co-benefits by reducing habitat loss, these benefits are largely offset at high levels of carbon-focused AR (>150 Mha) due to disproportionate losses of open habitats. Notably, we also find almost no effect of AR on energy-system transformations until 2050 and only limited effects of CDR from AR on long-term emissions. Our findings underline that near-term emission cuts remain critical for achieving the Paris Agreement and emphasise the need to shift from a dominant focus on large-scale tree planting to broader ecosystem restoration.

The Chinese food system is increasingly strained by rising food demand and tightening resource and environmental constraints, posing major challenges to food security. This study combines a China-tailored agro-economic model (model of agricultural production and its impact on the environment for China [MAgPIE-China]) with ex post data envelopment analysis (DEA) to project total factor productivity (TFP) growth in China’s crop sector under diverse socioeconomic scenarios and to quantify joint effects of TFP growth and agricultural trade on resource and environmental outcomes. We find that TFP in the crop sector is projected to increase by 2050, with cumulative growth ranging from 26% to 42% across shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) relative to 2020 levels. Enhanced TFP, together with demand-driven shifts in crop composition, is associated with lower methane emissions, whereas agricultural trade primarily mitigates cropland pressure in China and contributes to global resource-use efficiency gains. These findings provide insights for policies aimed at balancing food security, resource conservation, and environmental protection in China.

EAT-Lancet 2.0 makes the case that healthy and sustainable food systems must also be just. This Voices asks: what would it take to move from global targets to transformation pathways that are regionally grounded, politically feasible, and avoid deepening existing inequalities? Are there specific design principles, policy interventions, or research frontiers needed to support such a food-system transformation?

Climate change threatens food security in low-income countries dependent on rainfed, smallholder agriculture; however, its historical impact on undernutrition remains unknown. We integrate a machine learning crop model with an epidemiological model to estimate the contribution of historical climate change to child undernutrition in Burkina Faso. We find that between 1993 and 2021, 2.7% (95% uncertainty interval [UI]: 1.2–4.2%) of stunting and 6.2% (95% UI: 3.5–9.2%) of underweight cases in children can be attributed to climate change-induced reductions in maize, millet, and sorghum yields. Attributable burdens are higher for severe forms of undernutrition, amounting to 4.8% (95% UI: 2.0–7.3) of severe stunting and 8.0% (95% UI: 2.5–13.1) of severe underweight. These findings add to the growing evidence on the health impacts of climate change and underscore the need for mitigation and adaptation to protect child health and wellbeing.

This study examines the environmental and resource implications of India's 20% ethanol blending mandate, with a focus on its effects on land use, water and fertilizer use, and greenhouse gas emissions. Using a global partial equilibrium model of the land-use sector, MAgPIE, we evaluate scenarios involving different feedstock combinations involving molasses and sugarcane juice. Results reveal that ethanol production from molasses exerts considerable pressure on natural resources due to the high land, water, and fertilizer demands of sugarcane. Conversely, ethanol derived from sugarcane juice proves to be a more sustainable option, requiring less water and fertilizer while generating lower greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless, all scenarios present challenges related to food security, through increases in food prices, and resource competition. Sensitivity analysis shows that limited technological progress or constrained trade amplify domestic land, water, and emission burdens. Our findings provide directly usable evidence for designing India's biofuel roadmap. They can inform (a) the choice of feedstock-mix for achieving blending targets with lower land, water, and nitrogen footprints (b) complementary policies on fertilizer management, irrigation efficiency, and trade; and (c) the timing and scale-up of diversified and second-generation feedstocks. Overall, the study highlights that careful management of feedstock portfolios and supporting agricultural policies is essential for aligning India's ethanol expansion with long-term climate, food security, and resource sustainability goals.

Background: The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) are an essential framework for understanding how future socioeconomic changes could alter the magnitude and pattern of climate-related risks across sectors and the challenges for adaptation and mitigation responses. However, drivers of population health have yet to be formally integrated into the SSPs, resulting in fragmented climate-health modeling approaches and interpretation challenges. Previous global health modeling emphasized estimating changes in disease burdens in response to changing weather patterns, with limited incorporation of additional risk factors. Methods: We rectify this gap by providing health narratives for each of the five SSPs, through a framework detailing the potential population health consequences of changes in social, economic, health system, and other health drivers. The narratives were informed by insights from 63 global climate and health experts, following a June 2025 workshop. Findings: Population health drivers diverge substantially over the century depending on policy decisions and socioeconomic changes under the SSPs. The SSP3 and SSP4 narratives detail many changes that might contribute significant risks to health, while the SSP1 and SSP5 narratives showcase the role of effective governance and adequate resourcing in contributing to positive population health outcomes and health system drivers. Interpretation: The final narratives provide key insights that can improve the robustness and policy relevance of projections of possible future population health and health system risks. These narratives can facilitate decision-making that accounts for a range of climate and development pathways, as well as projections of cross-sectoral issues (e.g., health, water, and energy). Further research will quantify additional key health drivers. Funding: Wellcome Project Grant 313527/Z/24/Z

Food systems are a major contributor to exceeding planetary boundaries1-3 and poor quality diets are a key mortality risk globally4. Projected population and income growth could exacerbate these challenges5. In response, there are calls for transformation towards healthy and sustainable food systems6-8. However, the scale and distribution of the impacts of this transformation on agriculture are underexplored. Here we show that, by 2050, the transformation of food systems towards healthy diets (adoption of the EAT-Lancet reference diet), improved productivity and halving of food waste results in a fundamental restructuring of global agriculture, aspects of which break with historical trends. Scenario simulations using a multimodel ensemble of ten global economic models show a 6% median decrease in agricultural land (+1% to -26%) compared with 2020 levels. By 2050, agricultural production would be 17% lower than business-as-usual projections (-2% to -32%) and, economically, the value of this production is US$1.6 trillion (26%) lower (+8% to -58%). Within this, the value of livestock production would be substantially lower than current 2050 projections (-49% to -83%), while vegetable, fruit, nut and legume production value would increase by 23% (-33% to +106%). Results are dependent on the assumed policies to achieve the transformation scenario. We highlight a more active role for food policy to consider the benefits of such a transformation (improved population health and reduced environmental pressures) and navigate the political economy of its impacts.

Multiple cropping increases land productivity by allowing multiple harvests per year, offering production gains without cropland expansion. Irrigation is especially critical in the seasonally dry tropics, enabling multiple cropping where otherwise only a single rainfed cycle would be feasible. Estimates of the current state of multiple cropping and the multiple cropping expansion potential without changes in irrigation patterns exist, but the multiple cropping expansion potential through irrigation expansion has not yet been assessed at the global scale. Here, we estimate multiple cropping expansion potentials on existing cropland considering the interaction with irrigation and local water availability constraints to determine how much cropland area can be managed in multiple cropping systems and the associated increases in annual yields and crop production. We find that, under current climatic conditions, there is considerable global biophysical potential to expand multiple cropping on existing cropland, particularly when also expanding irrigation. Total global crop production could increase by 28% (from 4 200 mio. t DM to 5 400 mio. t DM). This gain stems from nearly quadrupling the area under rainfed multiple cropping, more than doubling multiple cropping area within already irrigated lands, and expanding irrigation into areas where it facilitates another growing season. Our study reveals a considerable multiple cropping expansion potential on existing cropland that—when tapped—could contribute to averting further cropland expansion to meet future demand for agricultural outputs. Local irrigation water availability constrains the irrigation-enabled multiple cropping potential, implying that the interaction of multiple cropping and irrigation is crucial to consider in comprehensive land and water assessments that account for biophysical and socio-economic constraints, sustainability criteria, and land competition under future global change.

ABSTRACT Climate‐smart agriculture (CSA) is widely promoted to enhance resilience and productivity among smallholder farmers, yet its diffusion remains uneven due to structural barriers and heterogeneous adoption contexts. Existing forecasting tools, such as the Adoption and Diffusion Outcome Prediction Tool (ADOPT), estimate adoption trajectories but rely largely on expert‐driven assumptions that may overlook empirical disparities in access, capability, and opportunity. This study develops an equity‐calibrated forecasting framework by integrating empirical diagnostics from a Bayesian‐Ising ensemble model into ADOPT. Using survey data from 569 smallholder households in Western Kenya, stratified by gender and agroecological zone, we forecast adoption trajectories for six CSA practices while accounting for structural inequalities in adoption pathways. The model predicts a peak adoption level of 84% after 19 years, with 50% of peak adoption reached by year 8.2. Sensitivity analysis identifies perceived economic benefit as the strongest determinant of adoption, followed by awareness, trialability, and relative advantage. Results reveal a pronounced asymmetry: a one‐step negative shift in perceived income benefit reduces peak adoption by 19.9 percentage points, more than double the 8.9‐point increase generated by an equivalent positive shift, consistent with Prospect Theory's prediction of loss aversion. Compared with an expert‐only scenario, the equity‐calibrated model lowers the projected adoption ceiling by 15 percentage points, highlighting the consequences of ignoring structural barriers. By linking empirical diagnostics with technology forecasting, the study provides a replicable framework for equity‐sensitive innovation governance and inclusive scaling strategies.

Land use is a key human driver affecting Earth’s biogeochemical cycles, hydrology, and biodiversity. Therefore, projecting future land use is crucial for global change impact analyses. This study compares harmonized land-use and management trends, analyzing uncertainties through a three-factor variance analysis involving socioeconomic–climate scenarios, land-use models, and climate models. The projected patterns are used as human-forcing inputs for the Intersectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project phase 3b (ISIMIP3b) and multiple impact modeling teams. We employ two models (IMAGE and MAgPIE) to project future land use and management under three socioeconomic–climate scenarios (SSP1–RCP2.6, SSP3–RCP7.0, and SSP5–RCP8.5), driven by impact data like yields, water demand, and carbon stocks from updated climate projections of five global models, considering CO2 fertilization effects. On the global level, there is strong agreement among land-use models on land-use trends in the SSP1–RCP2.6 scenario (low adaptation and mitigation challenges). However, significant differences exist in management-related variables, such as the area allocated for second-generation bioenergy crops. Uncertainty in land-use variables increases with higher spatial resolution, particularly concerning the locations where cropland and grassland shrinkage could occur under this scenario. In SSP5–RCP8.5 and SSP3–RCP7.0, differences among land-use models in global and regional trends are primarily associated with grassland area demand. Concerning the variance analysis, the selection of climate models minimally affects the variance in projections at different scales. However, the influence of the socioeconomic–climate scenarios, the land-use model, and interactions among the underlying factors on projected uncertainty varies for the different land-use and management variables. Our results highlight the need for more intercomparison exercises focusing on future spatially explicit projections to enhance understanding of the intricate interplay between human activities, climate, socioeconomic dynamics, land responses, and their associated uncertainties on the high-resolution level as models evolve. It also underscores the importance of region-specific strategies to balance agricultural productivity, environmental conservation, and sustainable resource use, emphasizing adaptive capacity building, improved land-use management, and targeted conservation efforts.

BACKGROUND:Ambitious climate change mitigation in all economic sectors is crucial for limiting global warming. Cost-effective mitigation pathways to keep global average temperature increases below 1·5°C by the end of the 21st century often rely on land-based greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions, increased land-based carbon uptake and biomass supply to other sectors (eg, energy and transport), and demand-side changes in the food system. To evaluate the broader sustainability of land-based climate change mitigation action, we evaluated synergies and trade-offs of individual and combined supply-side mitigation measures across five planetary boundaries. We also examined the role of a food demand transformation aligned with the dietary recommendations of the updated planetary health diet defined in the forthcoming EAT-Lancet Commission 2.0 report in shaping planetary boundary outcomes. METHODS:In this modelling study, we used the dynamic land-system modelling framework MAgPIE to assess the consequences of land-based GHG reductions, increased land-based carbon uptake, increased biomass supply to other sectors, and a food-system transformation towards the planetary health diet including food waste reductions on five planetary boundary domains (climate change, nitrogen, land-system change, freshwater use, and biosphere integrity) relative to a reference scenario without land-system mitigation throughout the century. For each planetary boundary control variable, we calculated the level of planetary boundary transgression (ie, the extent to which scenario outcomes exceeded the defined safe operating space) and assessed the contributions of land-based mitigation strategies to reducing planetary boundary transgressions projected for the reference scenario. FINDINGS:Our projections show that a food-system transformation together with ambitious land-system and energy-system climate change mitigation can limit global warming to below 1·5°C by 2100, while also reducing planetary boundary transgression (particularly for the climate change, land-system change, biosphere integrity, and nitrogen planetary boundaries). However, a safe operating space was not achieved through these mitigation measures, as most planetary boundaries were still projected to remain transgressed by the end of the 21st century. Increased bioenergy supply alone worsened planetary boundary transgression when only looking at land-system impacts, but combining increased bioenergy supply with GHG pricing in the land system alleviated these trade-offs. Food waste reductions and dietary shifts towards the planetary health diet were projected to ease pressures on the land system and reduce planetary boundary transgression of all assessed planetary boundaries. INTERPRETATION:This research highlights the importance of considering multiple planetary boundaries and the interactions between various mitigation strategies when assessing climate mitigation action in the land system to avoid negative consequences for other aspects of the environment. Following an ambitious climate change mitigation pathway compatible with the Paris Agreement results in a transgression of all assessed five planetary boundaries by 2100. However, the combination of the land-system mitigation measures included in this study produced a substantial shift towards the safe operating space for humanity. FUNDING:EAT-Lancet Commission 2.0.

Achieving the Paris Agreement's CO2 emission reduction goals heavily relies on enhancing carbon storage and sequestration in forests globally. Yet, the increasing vulnerability of carbon stored in forests to both climate change and human intervention is often neglected in current mitigation strategies. Our study explores modelled interactions between key emission sectors, indicating that accelerated decarbonization could meet climate objectives despite forest carbon losses due to disturbances. However, delaying action on forest carbon loss by just five years consistently doubles the additional mitigation costs and efforts across key sectors, regardless of the assessed forest disturbance rates. Moreover, these myopic responses to forest carbon loss are as stringent, or even more demanding, than immediate responses to twice the forest disturbance rate. Our results underline the urgent need to monitor and safeguard forests for the economic feasibility of the Paris Agreement's climate goals.

Food systems are essential for the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in China. Here, using an integrated assessment modelling framework that considers country-specific pathways and covers 18 indicators, we find that most social and environmental targets for the Chinese food system under current trends are not aligned with the United Nations Agenda 2030. We further quantify the impacts of multiple measures, revealing potential trade-offs in pursuing strategies aimed at public health, environmental sustainability and livelihood improvement in isolation. Among the individual packages of measures, a shift towards healthy diets exhibits the lowest level of trade-offs, leading to improvements in nutrition, health, environment and livelihoods. In contrast, focusing efforts on climate change mitigation and ecological conservation, or promoting faster socioeconomic development alone, have trade-offs between social and environmental outcomes. These trade-offs could be minimized by bundling all three aspects of measures. The effectiveness of the different policies and policy bundles for food systems transformation to achieve SDGs in China vary widely. Using an integrated modelling framework covering 18 indicators, this study compares the trade-offs and outcomes of efforts focused on dietary transitions, climate change mitigation and ecological conservation, and faster socioeconomic development, ultimately revealing that dietary shifts offer the most benefits.

Agricultural production costs represent less than half of total food prices for higher-income countries and will likely further decrease globally. Added-value components such as transport, processing, marketing and catering show increasing importance in food value chains, especially as countries undergo a nutrition transition towards more complex and industrial food systems. Here, using a combined statistical and process-based modelling framework, we derive and project the value-added component of food prices for 136 countries and 11 different food groups, for food-at-home and food-away-from-home. We identify the declining but differentiated producer share in consumer food prices across food products, and provide scenarios of future consumer prices under a business-as-usual as well as climate mitigation scenarios. Food price increases from policies targeting agricultural producers, such as greenhouse gas taxes, are not as stark when transmitted to consumers owing to higher value added in higher-income countries, while a pronounced effect remains in lower-income countries, even in coming decades.

The transition to more sustainable diets is critical to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and meet the Paris Agreement commitments. In China, this transition is particularly urgent due to the double burden of malnutrition and environmental degradation. In this study, we explored the potential of alternative diets in China to enhance public health, ensure food affordability and reduce adverse environmental impacts. We assessed these patterns through a multi-objective diet optimization model combined with an agro-economic modelling framework that captures key socio-economic and biophysical dynamics in China. The proposed healthy, affordable and low-environmental-impact diets substantially improve dietary quality and are projected to reduce food expenditures by 20-28% (US$128-186 capita-1 in power purchasing parities of 2005) by 2050. These diets also bring environmental benefits, including a 3-11% (4-13 Mha) expansion of non-forest natural vegetation area and modest biodiversity gains by 2050, a 9-40% (3-13 Gt CO2-equivalent) reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a 5-12% (347-772 km3) decrease in freshwater withdrawals between 2020 and 2050. Our findings underscore the potential to achieve multiple co-benefits through long-term and target-oriented dietary transformations, while also balancing the transformation feasibility with achievable gains.

Transformation to healthier and more sustainable diets in China can generate measurable benefits for nutrition, the environment and food affordability. Integrating multidimensional sustainability goals into China’s dietary guidelines can help to align food policy with long-term societal and environmental improvements.

Multiple cropping practices, i.e. planting and harvesting crops several times a year at the same plot of land, may increase global food production without further expanding cropland (Wu et al. 2014). Especially the combination of irrigation in the dry season to facilitate multiple harvests a year potentially facilitates more food production on the same amount of land. Global dynamic gridded vegetation models that inform global land-use models usually only model one growing season a year. Neglecting the yield that can be achieved in the second or third season leads to an underestimation of yields and irrigation water requirements and biased projections of the spatial allocation of rainfed and irrigated cropland.With an update of our hydro-economic model (Beier et al. 2023), we are able to estimate multiple cropping potentials and model multiple cropping and irrigation expansion. It is the tandem of these two intensification measures that facilitates production gains without expanding cropland. We estimate multiple cropping potentials considering their interaction with irrigation and water availability limitations to determine how much cropland area can be managed in a multiple cropping system given local crop growth conditions (suitability for multiple cropping), the associated water requirements and locally limited water availability for irrigation. We obtain multiple cropping and irrigation potentials at a 0.5° spatial resolution using biophysical inputs from the global vegetation model LPJmL (Schaphoff et al. 2018, von Bloh et al. 2018). LPJmL provides crop-specific (irrigated and rainfed) crop yields and crop water requirements for the main growing season for 12 crop functional types and gross primary production (GPP) of grass for the entire year at a 0.5° spatial resolution. To derive a metric on the yield increase through multiple cropping, we need an aggregated approach that abstracts from the very high set of potential combinations of crops in multiple cropping. We therefore use the main-season-to-whole-year ratio of grass GPP to obtain the grid-cell-specific potential multiple cropping effect. This ratio is used to scale main season crop yields and crop water requirements. In terms of irrigation water availability, the spatial allocation of irrigation water takes upstream-downstream relationships into account and considers the monetary yield gain through irrigation to determine the location of potentially irrigated areas (Beier et al. 2023).With this, we address the research question: What is the biophysical and economic multiple cropping production potential under consideration of local (spatially explicit) irrigation water availability constraints on current cropland?References Beier, F. et al. (2023a). Technical and Economic Irrigation Potentials within Land and Water Boundaries. Water Resources ResearchBeier, F., et al. (2023b) ‘Mrwater: MadRat Based MAgPIE Water Input Data Library’. 10.5281/zenodo.5801680.Schaphoff, S. et al. (2018). ‘LPJmL4 – a Dynamic Global Vegetation Model with Managed Land – Part 1: Model Description’. Geoscientific Model Development 11 (4)Wu, W., et al. (2018) Global cropping intensity gaps: increasing food production without cropland expansion. Land Use Policy 76 (2018)von Bloh, W. et al. (2018). Implementing the Nitrogen Cycle into the Dynamic Global Vegetation, Hydrology, and Crop Growth Model LPJmL (Version 5.0). Geoscientific Model Development 11 (7)

The improvement of the global food system requires a thorough understanding of how specific measures may contribute to the system’s transformation. Here we apply a global food and land system modelling framework to quantify the impact of 23 food system measures on 15 outcome indicators related to public health, the environment, social inclusion and the economy, up to 2050. While all individual measures come with trade-offs, their combination can reduce trade-offs and enhance co-benefits. We estimate that combining all food system measures may reduce yearly mortality by 182 million life years and almost halves nitrogen surplus while offsetting negative effects of environmental protection measures on absolute poverty. Through joint efforts, including measures outside the food system, the 1.5 °C climate target can be achieved. This study applies a global food and land system modelling framework to quantify the impact of 23 food system measures on 15 outcome indicators related to public health, the environment, social inclusion and the economy—from today until 2050.

The transition to a bioeconomy holds promise for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and advancing sustainable development but also presents complex challenges. This perspectives article critically examines the environmental, social, and economic implications of shifting from fossil-based to bio-based resources, addressing key concerns such as land use competition, biodiversity loss, and social equity. Rising biomass demand poses sustainability risks, especially for the Global South, where it may exacerbate food insecurity and ecosystem degradation. Without careful management, this transition could lead to deforestation, biodiversity loss, and increased carbon emissions, undermining its intended benefits. To navigate these challenges, the article outlines pathways for an inclusive and sustainable bioeconomy transition. It emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary approaches that integrate diverse knowledge systems and values to ensure the equitable distribution of benefits and risks. Policymakers should adopt governance frameworks that align sustainable development goals with local realities, fostering a just transition that mitigates socioecological challenges while maximizing long-term sustainability.