Climate change mitigation will require substantial investments in renewables. In addition, climate change will affect future renewable supply and hence, power sector investment requirements. We study the implications of climate impacts on renewables for power sector investments under deep decarbonization using a global integrated assessment model. We focus on Latin American and Caribbean, an under-studied region but of great interest due to its strong role in international climate mitigation and vulnerability to climate change. We find that accounting for climate impacts on renewables results in significant additional investments ($12–114 billion by 2100 across Latin American countries) for a region with weak financial infrastructure. We also demonstrate that accounting for climate impacts only on hydropower—a primary focus of previous studies—significantly underestimates cumulative investments, particularly in scenarios with high intermittent renewable deployment. Our study underscores the importance of comprehensive analyses of climate impacts on renewables for improved energy planning.

Achieving the Paris Agreement’s near-term goals (nationally determined contributions, or NDCs) and long-term temperature targets could result in pre-mature retirement, or stranding, of carbon-intensive assets before the end of their useful lifetime. We use an integrated assessment model to quantify the implications of the Paris Agreement for stranded assets in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), a developing region with the least carbon-intensive power sector in the world. We find that meeting the Paris goals results in stranding of $37–90 billion and investment of $1.9–2.6 trillion worth of power sector capital (2021–2050) across a range of future scenarios. Strengthening the NDCs could reduce stranding costs by 27%–40%. Additionally, while politically shielding power plants from pre-mature retirement or increasing the role of other sectors (e.g. land-use) could also reduce power sector stranding, such actions could make mitigation more expensive and negatively impact society. For example, we find that avoiding stranded assets in the power sector increases food prices 13%, suggesting implications for food security in LAC. Our analysis demonstrates that climate goals are relevant for investment decisions even in developing countries with low emissions.

This paper presents a synthesis of evidence and implementation gaps in the application of nature-based solutions (NbS) in agricultural landscapes that contribute to reduce trade-offs between food production, climate change and conservation objectives. The literature and data surveyed relies primarily in peer-reviewed sources and is organized around an overview of NbS science and applications in agricultural landscapes in major biomes. To date, the focus of NbS applications in food production has been predominantly for carbon sequestration, water quality, and disaster-risk management objectives while documented examples of NbS benefits in agricultural production are sparse. Conservation applications of NbS appear to show evidence of effectiveness across multiple objectives in biodiversity, land, soil and water. Evidence and analysis of NbS to meet climate change mitigation targets has surged in recent years driven by global community efforts. Overall, considerable scientific work remains to refine and reduce the uncertainty of NbS benefit estimates across production, climate and conservation objectives, and resilience implications. However, delaying implementation of NbS in agricultural landscapes would likely increase the costs to meet agricultural production, climate, conservation and other societally beneficial goals, while degrading the capacity of natural systems to continue to provide these and other ecosystem services.

Groundwater use for irrigation has a major influence on agricultural productivity and local water resources. This study evaluated the groundwater irrigation schemes, SWAT auto-irrigation scheduling based on plant water stress (Auto-Irr), and prescribed irrigation based on well pumping rates in MODFLOW (Well-Irr), in the U.S. Northern High Plains (NHP) aquifer using coupled SWAT-MODFLOW model simulations for the period 1982–2008. Auto-Irr generally performed better than Well-Irr in simulating groundwater irrigation volume (reducing the mean bias from 86 to −30%) and groundwater level (reducing the normalized root-mean-square-error from 13.55 to 12.47%) across the NHP, as well as streamflow interannual variations at two stations (increasing NSE from 0.51, 0.51 to 0.55, 0.53). We also examined the effects of groundwater irrigation on the water cycle. Based on simulation results from Auto-Irr, historical irrigation led to significant recharge along the Elkhorn and Platte rivers. On average over the entire NHP, irrigation increased surface runoff, evapotranspiration, soil moisture and groundwater recharge by 21.3%, 4.0%, 2.5% and 1.5%, respectively. Irrigation improved crop water productivity by nearly 27.2% for corn and 23.8% for soybean. Therefore, designing sustainable irrigation practices to enhance crop productivity must consider both regional landscape characteristics and downstream hydrological consequences.