Multifunctional land use for sustainability and resilience, IEA Bioenergy Task 45

We are pleased to advertise this exciting and truly international project with the International Energy Agency (IEA) Bioenergy Task 45 Team. In collaboration with 13 members from across the world, the PDS candidate appointed into this role will have the opportunity to work at the interface of research, industry and policy. You will become an integrated member of the Task, acting as a bridge across the member countries and facilitating collaborative engagement with the task and beyond. 

Land underpins the delivery of a wide range of ecosystem services beyond the “provisioning” services directly valued in the economy, such as carbon storage, sustaining biodiversity, regulating clean water flows. Monoculture production of food, feed and biomass, involving maximum delivery of a small number of crops (including forage feeds), undermines the sustainability and resilience of land use. In assessment frameworks that have dominated to date, such as attribution life cycle assessment (LCA), narrow consideration of land-based production systems in relation to a single primary output (e.g. a food or energy product) has reinforced the economic tendency towards high levels of specialisation across agricultural and land systems. This is often at the cost of diversity, ecosystem health and resilience.  

Foresight and back-casting approaches embrace the need to fundamentally change land use patterns and food production mixes in order to provide sustainable nutrition and biomass supplies into the wider bioeconomy whilst respecting planetary boundaries. There is an urgent need to apply structured foresight analyses to evaluate prospective future land configurations that contribute to multiple sustainability objectives while delivering nutrition and biomass for the biobased economy – at a level of resolution to inform national policy decisions.

The proposed project will evaluate potential future land use configurations in a number of countries, exploring where and how biomass production can support multiple objectives for a sustainable and resilient land sector and wider economy.   

This project will evaluate current and prospective future (2050+) land use configurations (scenarios) that deliver specified output assortments, in case study countries – to explore where and how biomass (and specifically bioenergy) production can support wider sustainability and resilience objectives at national scale. We will explore how we can provide food, fuel, fibre, and wider ecosystem services (such as climate regulation, clean water, biodiversity etc.) from the land whilst considering the varying needs of different actors. For example, widespread monoculture food production is economically important and supplies food, however it may come at the cost of biodiversity or soil quality. 

The influence of different future global contexts will be considered, using Shared Socioeconomic Pathways narrative futures as a framework, providing some insight into the robustness and resilience of land use decisions facing into an uncertain future. 

A major output of the project will be a decision support matrix that enables structured, multi-criteria analyses of land use decisions in future contexts. This matrix will translate quantitative and qualitative data into a scoring system to support transparent and holistic evaluation of bioenergy-integrated-landscapes alongside other landscape configurations that prioritise other aspects.

Project deliverables

The Doctoral Practitioner will need to be flexible to spend 3-6 month durations at different IEA T45 member countries to complete this project. This is a fantastic opportunity to travel and experience varied research culture across the world.

Open to any UK or international candidates.

Person specification

• Have a MSc in Environmental Sciences, Physical Geography, or related field
• Have strong affinity with sustainability and land use
• Have strong programming and modelling skills
• Have experience with GIS
• Enjoy working in an interdisciplinary and international environment
• Are willing to travel to case study countries and collaborate with local experts
• Strong communication skills are necessary and evidence of stakeholder engagement at all levels is required.
• The candidate must be able to display a capacity for independent thought, as well as a pragmatic attitude to working within industry.

The Centre for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Surrey is an internationally-acclaimed centre of excellence on sustainable development. Seeking sustainable energy security solutions through international collaboration and coordination, focusing not only on technical solutions but environmental and socio-economic impacts aligns with the interdisciplinary approach of CES.