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Global Stakes: Potential Agricultural Productivity Losses from Full Exploitation of Canada’s Oil Sands

10/17/2011

Full exploitation of the Alberta oil sands deposit would have the most severe impacts on regions where the poorest countries are concentrated. In this note, David Wheeler suggests that full exploitation of Canada’s oil sands deposit would impose significant agricultural productivity losses on over 3 billion people in the developing world, and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Although, individual country estimates are subject to considerable uncertainty there can be little doubt about the destructive implications.

A fuller accounting of potential losses indicates that a carbon release of this magnitude would also expose hundreds of millions people to extreme weather events and sea-level rise. Similar losses will be generated by full exploitation of other massive fossil fuel deposits.

Table 1: Full Exploitation of the Canadian Oil Sands Deposit: Distribution of Projected Agricultural Productivity Impacts by Region (PDF)

			Projected Agricultural Productivity Losses (%): Distribution of Developing Countries
Region	Countries	Rural Population 2008 (Million)	Minimum	Quartile 1	Median	Quartile 3	Maximum
Africa	50	590.4	-2.4	5.1	7.0	8.1	12.8
Asia	43	2,317.0	-2.4	2.6	5.0	5.7	8.7
Latin America	21	109.5	2.4	5.0	5.2	6.1	9.1
Total	114	3,016.9	-2.4	4.4	5.6	7.1	12.8

Table 2: Country Impacts of Potential Emissions From Canadian Oil Sands IPCC A2 Scenario Estimated Percent Agricultural Productivity Loss by 2080 (%APL) and Rural Population, 2008 (RP 08, in Millions) (HTML | PDF)

Figure 1: Country Ranks, Estimated Percentage of Agricultural Productivity Loss by 2080: Potential Carbon Emissions from Canadian Oil Sands