Assessing the impact of bioenergy crops cultivation on biodiversity: review of studies including the causal chain “drivers of feedstock production – land use change – impact assessment”.

International audience

Inglés. Over the last few decades, much emphasis has been put on using biomass and other renewable resources for energy production. In a context of increasing human population, global biodiversity decline and rapid climate change, expanding land clearance for bioenergy crop cultivation raises many concerns about the competition for agricultural land use between food, feed, and fibre production. Expanding land for bioenergy therefore challenges the sustainability of agricultural systems as well as its environmental impact. Several studies have attempted to quantify these impacts of land use change (LUC), however they do not take into account the causal chain from “the drivers of LUC to the impact assessment” which is required to understand the underlying mechanism.The work is part of a global project assessing the impact of LUC toward bioenergy crops cultivation considering the causal chain. Here, we review studies assessing how land-use shifts towards bioenergy crops impact biodiversity. The review first reveals that very few studies have assessed biodiversity by considering the whole causal chain. Despite this, a general consensus emerges on a negative impact on biodiversity of bioenergy crops cultivation. This study also points out the diversity of metrics used to assess biodiversity, from species richness to proxies such as habitat quality. Overall, this review suggests that a sounder quantification of the effect of LUC toward bioenergy crops cultivation could be obtained by using more accurate metrics both for biodiversity (i.e. coupling taxonomic and functional diversity indices, and selecting relevant taxa) and the characterization of the environment (i.e. landscape configuration and composition, and the integration of management practices).