Michael Obersteiner
Biographic Data
| ID | 6318238 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael Obersteiner |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael |
| FAMILY NAME | Obersteiner |
| SIGNATURE | OBERSTEINER M |
| AFFILIATIONS | International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6981-2769 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 57 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 578 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 57 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Stabilizing time-lagged climate impacts requires net-negative emissions for centuries
In July 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) affirmed that States must prevent significant harm to the environment, including the climate system. Some of the most critical climate impacts, such as sea level rise (SLR) and permafrost thaw (PFT), will intensify for centuries even under 1.5–2 °C stabilization. In the terms expressed by the ICJ, we argue a duty exists to pursue stabilization of impacts at the lowest attainable levels. Using…
From local landscapes to global
Transforming food systems to improve socio-economic, environmental, and food security outcomes requires improved understanding of how system actors and outcomes interact across different levels and scales. To date, food systems science supporting the Food Systems Transformation (FST) has focused on macro and global or planetary level outcomes, while actor-focused work has occurred at more granular levels in adjacent yet siloed disciplines. This p…
Getting into the doughnut
The global food system's recent disruptions reveal its vulnerability to cascading failures, highlighting the urgent need to strengthen its systemic resilience, a vital precondition for global food security. Though modeling is key to comprehending its complex behavior and informing policy and decisions, the conceptualization, assessment, and modeling of systemic resilience are still in their infancy, raising questions about the suitability of exis…
Integrative Sustainable Development Goal policy portfolios to accelerate global progress towards a more sustainable future
National Natural Science Foundation of China, China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, and China Scholarship Council
Labour requirements for healthy and sustainable diets at global, regional, and national levels
Wellcome Trust
Exploring the potential for nitrogen fertilizer use mitigation with bundles of management interventions
Mineral nitrogen (N) fertilizer use is essential to maintain high-yielding cropping systems that presently provide food for nearly half of humanity. Simultaneously, it causes a range of detrimental impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions, eutrophication, and contamination of drinking water. There is growing recognition of the need to balance crop production with the impacts of fertilizer use. Here we provide a global assessment of the potential …
Robust strategies to end global poverty and reduce environmental pressures
Eroding resilience of deforestation interventions—evidence from Brazil’s lost decade
Brazil once set the example for curtailing deforestation with command and control policies, but, in the last decade, these interventions have gone astray. Environmental research and policy today are largely informed by the earlier successes of deforestation interventions, but not their recent failures. Here, we investigate the resilience of deforestation interventions. We discuss how the recent trend reversal in Brazil came to be, and what its im…
A decentralized approach to model national and global food and land use systems
The achievement of several sustainable development goals and the Paris Climate Agreement depends on rapid progress towards sustainable food and land systems in all countries. We have built a flexible, collaborative modeling framework to foster the development of national pathways by local research teams and their integration up to global scale. Local researchers independently customize national models to explore mid-century pathways of the food a…
The meaning of net zero and how to get it right
A review of model-based scenario analysis of poverty for informing sustainability
Early systems change necessary for catalyzing long-term sustainability in a post-2030 agenda
important for accelerating progress towards increasingly ambitious sustainability targets by 2050 and 2100
How can diverse national food and land-use priorities be reconciled with global sustainability targets? Lessons from the Fable initiative
There is an urgent need for countries to transition their national food and land-use systems toward food and nutritional security, climate stability, and environmental integrity. How can countries satisfy their demands while jointly delivering the required transformative change to achieve global sustainability targets? Here, we present a collaborative approach developed with the FABLE—Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land, and Energy—Consortium t…
Sustainable pathways towards climate and biodiversity goals in the UK
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11625-022-01242-8
Multi-target scenario discovery to plan for sustainable food and land systems in Australia
China’s future food demand and its implications for trade and environment
Alternative futures for global biological invasions
Scenario analysis has emerged as a key tool to analyze complex and uncertain future socio-ecological developments. However, currently existing global scenarios (narratives of how the world may develop) have neglected biological invasions, a major threat to biodiversity and the economy. Here, we use a novel participatory process to develop a diverse set of global biological invasion scenarios spanning a wide range of plausible global futures throu…
Influences of international agricultural trade on the global phosphorus cycle and its associated issues
Conserving the Cerrado and Amazon biomes of Brazil protects the soy economy from damaging warming
In tropical regions, widespread loss of native forest and savanna vegetation is increasing extreme heat, particularly in agricultural regions. Using the case of rising extreme heat from lost forest and savanna vegetation in Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado regions, we modeled losses to soy production, the region’s principal economic activity. We assessed two types of extreme-heat regulation values: the value of avoided extreme-heat exposure of soy fr…
Global priority areas for ecosystem restoration
Extensive ecosystem restoration is increasingly seen as being central to conserving biodiversity 1 and stabilizing the climate of the Earth 2 . Although ambitious national and global targets have been set, global priority areas that account for spatial variation in benefits and costs have yet to be identified. Here we develop and apply a multicriteria optimization approach that identifies priority areas for restoration across all terrestrial biom…
Innovation can accelerate the transition towards a sustainable food system
Bending the curve of terrestrial biodiversity needs an integrated strategy
Increased efforts are required to prevent further losses to terrestrial biodiversity and the ecosystem services that it provides1,2. Ambitious targets have been proposed, such as reversing the declining trends in biodiversity3; however, just feeding the growing human population will make this a challenge4. Here we use an ensemble of land-use and biodiversity models to assess whether—and how—humanity can reverse the declines in terrestrial biodive…
Country-Level Relationships of the Human Intake of N and P, Animal and Vegetable Food, and Alcoholic Beverages with Cancer and Life Expectancy
Our analyses, thus, yielded four generally consistent conclusions. First, the excessive intake of terrestrial animal food, especially the levels of protein, N, and P, is associated with higher prevalence of cancer, whereas equivalent intake from vegetables is associated with lower prevalence. Second, no consistent relationship was found for food N:P ratio and cancer prevalence. Third, the consumption of alcoholic beverages correlates with prevale…
The global cropland-sparing potential of high-yield farming
Supplementary material to "Mapping the yields of lignocellulosic bioenergy crops from observations at the global scale"
The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and their energy, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions implications
This paper presents the overview of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and their energy, land use, and emissions implications. The SSPs are part of a new scenario framework, established by the climate change research community in order to facilitate the integrated analysis of future climate impacts, vulnerabilities, adaptation, and mitigation. The pathways were developed over the last years as a joint community effort and describe plausible…
Land-use futures in the shared socio-economic pathways
Narratives for the Shared Socio-Economic Pathways (SSPs) focusing on the land sector are presented. • Integrated Assessment Models have been applied for the SSPs to assess potential future developments for land use, greenhouse gas emissions, food provision and prices. • Model results reflect the general storylines of the SSPs and indicate a broad range of potential land-use futures. • SSP-based land use pathways aim at supporting future climate r…
The marker quantification of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 2
Studies of global environmental change make extensive use of scenarios to explore how the future can evolve under a consistent set of assumptions. The recently developed Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) create a framework for the study of climate-related scenario outcomes. Their five narratives span a wide range of worlds that vary in their challenges for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Here we provide background on the quantificati…
What are the limits to oil palm expansion
Palm oil production has boomed over the last decade, resulting in an expansion of the global oil palm planting area from 10 to 17 Million hectares between 2000 and 2012. Previous studies showed that a significant share of this expansion has come at the expense of tropical forests, notably in Indonesia and Malaysia, the current production centers. Governments of developing and emerging countries in all tropical regions increasingly promote oil pal…
Modelling the drivers of a widespread shift to sustainable diets
Citizen science and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
China’s future food demand and its implications for trade and environment
The global cropland-sparing potential of high-yield farming
Resource nexus perspectives towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
Site identification for carbon sequestration in Latin America
Multi-target scenario discovery to plan for sustainable food and land systems in Australia
The global nexus of food–trade–water sustaining environmental flows by 2050
Impact of the 2 °C target on global woody biomass use
How can diverse national food and land-use priorities be reconciled with global sustainability targets? Lessons from the Fable initiative
There is an urgent need for countries to transition their national food and land-use systems toward food and nutritional security, climate stability, and environmental integrity. How can countries satisfy their demands while jointly delivering the required transformative change to achieve global sustainability targets? Here, we present a collaborative approach developed with the FABLE—Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land, and Energy—Consortium t…
Conserving the Cerrado and Amazon biomes of Brazil protects the soy economy from damaging warming
In tropical regions, widespread loss of native forest and savanna vegetation is increasing extreme heat, particularly in agricultural regions. Using the case of rising extreme heat from lost forest and savanna vegetation in Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado regions, we modeled losses to soy production, the region’s principal economic activity. We assessed two types of extreme-heat regulation values: the value of avoided extreme-heat exposure of soy fr…
Knowing sufficient and applying more
The hazard management problem presents a curious pair of phenomena: common agreement that something bad is happening, and universal inability to stop the growth of human and economic losses. White et al. (2001) argued in their statement ‘‘knowing better and losing even more’’ that improved knowledge about disaster management was not by itself sufficient to reverse the upward trend in disaster statistics. The fact that property losses caused by na…
Alternative futures for global biological invasions
Scenario analysis has emerged as a key tool to analyze complex and uncertain future socio-ecological developments. However, currently existing global scenarios (narratives of how the world may develop) have neglected biological invasions, a major threat to biodiversity and the economy. Here, we use a novel participatory process to develop a diverse set of global biological invasion scenarios spanning a wide range of plausible global futures throu…
Influences of international agricultural trade on the global phosphorus cycle and its associated issues
A framework for structuring the global forest monitoring landscape in the Redd+ era
Sustainable pathways towards climate and biodiversity goals in the UK
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11625-022-01242-8
The dynamic soil organic carbon mitigation potential of European cropland
Knowing sufficient and applying more
The hazard management problem presents a curious pair of phenomena: common agreement that something bad is happening, and universal inability to stop the growth of human and economic losses. White et al. (2001) argued in their statement ‘‘knowing better and losing even more’’ that improved knowledge about disaster management was not by itself sufficient to reverse the upward trend in disaster statistics. The fact that property losses caused by na…
Site identification for carbon sequestration in Latin America
Prevention of Surprise
Learning and climate change
Learning – i.e., the acquisition of new information that leads to changes in our assessment of uncertainty – plays a prominent role in the international climate policy debate. For example, the view that we should postpone actions until we know more continues to be influential. The latest work on learning and climate change includes new theoretical models, better informed simulations of how learning affects the optimal timing of emissions reductio…
Global potential for carbon sequestration
Global cost estimates of reducing carbon emissions through avoided deforestation
Tropical deforestation is estimated to cause about one-quarter of anthropogenic carbon emissions, loss of biodiversity, and other environmental services. United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change talks are now considering mechanisms for avoiding deforestation (AD), but the economic potential of AD has yet to be addressed. We use three economic models of global land use and management to analyze the potential contribution of AD activi…
Competition for land
A key challenge for humanity is how a future global population of 9 billion can all be fed healthily and sustainably. Here, we review how competition for land is influenced by other drivers and pressures, examine land-use change over the past 20 years and consider future changes over the next 40 years. Competition for land, in itself, is not a driver affecting food and farming in the future, but is an emergent property of other drivers and pressu…
Terrestrial ecosystem management for climate change mitigation
A framework for structuring the global forest monitoring landscape in the Redd+ era
Global land-use implications of first and second generation biofuel targets
Highlighting continued uncertainty in global land cover maps for the user community
In the last 10 years a number of new global datasets have been created and new, more sophisticated algorithms have been designed to classify land cover. GlobCover and MODIS v.5 are the most recent global land cover products available, where GlobCover (300 m) has the finest spatial resolution of other comparable products such as MODIS v.5 (500 m) and GLC-2000 (1 km). This letter shows that the thematic accuracy in the cropland domain has decreased…
Generating crop calendars with Web search data
This paper demonstrates the potential of using Web search volumes for generating crop specific planting and harvesting dates in the USA integrating climatic, social and technological factors affecting crop calendars. Using Google Insights for Search, clear peaks in volume occur at times of planting and harvest at the national level, which were used to derive corn specific planting and harvesting dates at a weekly resolution. Disaggregated to stat…
Biomass use, production, feed efficiencies, and greenhouse gas emissions from global livestock systems
Significance This report is unique in presenting a high-resolution dataset of biomass use, production, feed efficiencies, and greenhouse gas emissions by global livestock. This information will allow the global-change research community in enhancing our understanding of the sustainability of livestock systems and their role in food security, livelihoods and environmental sustainability.
Agricultural productivity and greenhouse gas emissions
In this letter, we investigate the effects of crop yield and livestock feed efficiency scenarios on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture and land use change in developing countries. We analyze mitigation associated with different productivity pathways using the global partial equilibrium model GLOBIOM. Our results confirm that yield increase could mitigate some agriculture-related emissions growth over the next decades. Closing yield g…
Cattle ranching intensification in Brazil can reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by sparing land from deforestation
Significance Could the intensification of pasture-based cattle ranching allow Brazil to protect its forests and reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while increasing its agricultural production? Would these benefits be substantially undermined by increased deforestation and GHGs triggered abroad? We model two policies for increasing cattle ranching productivity in Brazil: a tax on conventional pasture and a subsidy for semi-intensive pasture…
Climate change mitigation through livestock system transitions
Significance The livestock sector contributes significantly to global warming through greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. At the same time, livestock is an invaluable source of nutrition and livelihood for millions of poor people. Therefore, climate mitigation policies involving livestock must be designed with extreme care. Here we demonstrate the large mitigation potential inherent in the heterogeneity of livestock production systems. We find that e…
Climate change induced transformations of agricultural systems
Climate change might impact crop yields considerably and anticipated transformations of agricultural systems are needed in the coming decades to sustain affordable food provision. However, decision-making on transformational shifts in agricultural systems is plagued by uncertainties concerning the nature and geography of climate change, its impacts, and adequate responses. Locking agricultural systems into inadequate transformations costly to adj…
The dynamic soil organic carbon mitigation potential of European cropland
Assessing the land resource–food price nexus of the Sustainable Development Goals
Researchers apply an economic model to trade-offs facing the UN’s ambitious Sustainable Development Goals agenda.
What are the limits to oil palm expansion
Palm oil production has boomed over the last decade, resulting in an expansion of the global oil palm planting area from 10 to 17 Million hectares between 2000 and 2012. Previous studies showed that a significant share of this expansion has come at the expense of tropical forests, notably in Indonesia and Malaysia, the current production centers. Governments of developing and emerging countries in all tropical regions increasingly promote oil pal…
The marker quantification of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 2
Studies of global environmental change make extensive use of scenarios to explore how the future can evolve under a consistent set of assumptions. The recently developed Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) create a framework for the study of climate-related scenario outcomes. Their five narratives span a wide range of worlds that vary in their challenges for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Here we provide background on the quantificati…
The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and their energy, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions implications
This paper presents the overview of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and their energy, land use, and emissions implications. The SSPs are part of a new scenario framework, established by the climate change research community in order to facilitate the integrated analysis of future climate impacts, vulnerabilities, adaptation, and mitigation. The pathways were developed over the last years as a joint community effort and describe plausible…
Land-use futures in the shared socio-economic pathways
Narratives for the Shared Socio-Economic Pathways (SSPs) focusing on the land sector are presented. • Integrated Assessment Models have been applied for the SSPs to assess potential future developments for land use, greenhouse gas emissions, food provision and prices. • Model results reflect the general storylines of the SSPs and indicate a broad range of potential land-use futures. • SSP-based land use pathways aim at supporting future climate r…
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture without compromising food security
To keep global warming possibly below 1.5 oC and mitigate adverse effects of climate change, agriculture, like all other sectors, will have to contribute to efforts in achieving net negative emissions by the end of the century. Cost-efficient distribution of mitigation across regions and economic sectors is typically calculated using a global uniform carbon price in climate stabilization scenarios. However, in reality such a carbon price would su…
Impact of the 2 °C target on global woody biomass use
Economics (36 works) · Environmental Science (33 works) · Geography (33 works) · Ecology (30 works) · Business (28 works) · Environmental resource management (26 works) · Natural resource economics (25 works) · Agriculture (22 works) · Climate change (20 works) · Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact (18 works)