̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - industry

Global timber supply threatened as climate change pushes cropland northwards

jg533 — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 08:49:54 +0000

̽��ֱ��sight of vineyards in Britain is becoming more common as hotter summers create increasingly suitable conditions for growing grapes. But behind this success story is a sobering one: climate change is shifting the regions of the world suitable for growing crops.

Researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have uncovered a looming issue: as the land suitable for producing our food moves northwards, it will put a squeeze on the land we need to grow trees. ̽��ֱ��timber these trees produce is the basis of much of modern life – from paper and cardboard to furniture and buildings.

They say that the increasing competition between land for timber production and food production due to climate change has, until now, been overlooked – but is set to be an emerging issue as our demand for both continues to increase.

Under the worst-case scenario for climate change, where no action is taken to decarbonise society, the study found that over a quarter of existing forestry land – around 320 million hectares, equivalent to the size of India – will become more suitable for agriculture by the end of the century.

Most forests for timber production are currently located in the northern hemisphere in the US, Canada, China and Russia. ̽��ֱ��study found that 90% of all current forestry land that will become agriculturally productive by 2100 will be in these 4 countries.

In particular, tens of millions of hectares of timber-producing land across Russia will become newly suitable for agriculture – more than in the US, Canada and China put together – with conditions becoming favourable for potato, soy, and wheat farming.

“There’s only a finite area of suitable land on the planet where we can produce food and wood - 2 critical resources for society. As climate change worsens and agriculture is forced to expand northwards, there’s going to be increasing pressure on timber production,” said Dr Oscar Morton, a researcher in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences who co-led the study.

“We’ve got to be thinking 50 years ahead because if we want timber in the future, we need to be planting it now. ̽��ֱ��trees that will be logged by the end of this century are already in the ground – they’re on much slower cycles than food crops,” said Dr Chris Bousfield, a postdoctoral researcher in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences and co-leader of the study.

Global food demand is projected to double by 2050 as the population grows and becomes more affluent. Global wood demand is also expected to double in the same timeframe, in large part because it is a low-carbon alternative to concrete and steel for construction.

Shifting timber production deeper into boreal or tropical forests are not viable options, because the trees in those regions have stood untouched for thousands of years and logging them would release huge amounts of carbon and threaten biodiversity.

“A major environmental risk of increasing competition for land between farming and forestry is that wood production moves into remaining areas of primary forest within the tropics or boreal zones. These are the epicentres of remaining global wilderness and untouched tropical forests are the most biodiverse places on Earth. Preventing further expansion is critical,” said David Edwards, Professor of Plant Ecology in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences and senior author of the study.

To get their results, the researchers took satellite data showing intensive forestry across the world and overlaid it with predictions of suitable agricultural land for the world’s key crops -including rice, wheat, maize, soy and potato - in the future under various climate change scenarios.

Even in the best-case scenario, where the world meets net-zero targets, the researchers say there will still be significant future changes in the regions suitable for timber and crop production.

̽��ֱ��study is published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Timber production contributes over US $1.5 trillion (about £1.1 trillion) per year to national economies globally. Heatwaves and associated wildfires have caused huge recent losses of timber forests around the world. Climate change is also driving the spread of pests like the Bark Beetle, which attacks trees.

Climate change is expected to cause areas in the tropics to become too hot and inhospitable for growing food and make large areas of southern Europe much less suitable for food and wood production.

“Climate change is already causing challenges for timber production. Now on top of that, there will be this increased pressure from agriculture, creating a perfect storm of problems,” said Bousfield.

“Securing our future wood supply might not seem as pressing as securing the food we need to eat and survive. But wood is just as integrated within our daily lives and we need to develop strategies to ensure both food and wood security into the future,” said Morton.

Reference

Bousfield, C G, et al, ‘Climate change will exacerbate land conflict between agriculture and timber production.’ Nature Climate Change (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-024-02113-z

Climate change will move and reduce the land suitable for growing food and timber, putting the production of these 2 vital resources into direct competition, a new study has found.

Gianluca Cerullo

Timber/farming contrast in the USA

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Cement recycling method could help solve one of the world’s biggest climate challenges

sc604 — Wed, 22 May 2024 14:47:38 +0000

Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have developed a method to produce very low-emission concrete at scale – an innovation that could be transformative for the transition to net zero.

Britain industrialised much earlier than history books claim

fpjl2 — Fri, 05 Apr 2024 07:41:37 +0000

Millions of historical employment records show the British workforce turned sharply towards manufacturing jobs during the 1600s – suggesting the birth of the industrial age has much deeper roots.

Raising ambition in net zero flight – A briefing from COP28

plc32 — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 15:39:43 +0000

Professor Rob Miller, Director of the Whittle Laboratory, shares his thoughts on COP28 and the ambition for zero emission aviation.

It’s high time for alliances to ensure supply chain security, researchers urge

sc604 — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 18:00:00 +0000

An international team of researchers, including from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, are calling on government agencies and national banks to support an effort to map the billions of connections in the global supply network which, among other impacts, could reduce tax evasion by as much as €130 billion (about £113 billion) annually in the European Union.

̽��ֱ��researchers say that understanding supply networks could also improve supply security, promote objective monitoring of the green transition, and strengthen human rights compliance. Writing in the journal Science, they emphasise that international alliances, backed by government organisations and the research community, are needed for such an understanding.

Even though most companies know their immediate trading partners, they depend on countless other relationships up and down the supply chain. A shortage anywhere in the supply network may aﬀect suppliers, suppliers of suppliers, and so on, as well as customers and their customers’ customers.

“Supply disruptions caused an estimated loss of 2% of global GDP in 2021 – approximately $1.9 trillion (£1.6 trillion) – and signiﬁcantly contributed to the current high inﬂation,” said lead author Anton Pichler from the Complexity Science Hub (CSH) in Vienna. “For a long time, it was unthinkable to analyse the global economy at the company level, let alone its complex network of supply interconnections. That is changing now.”

“Understanding supply chain interdependencies between companies, sectors, and countries is vital for many challenges, from identifying how disruptions may emerge and cascade across economies, through to monitoring carbon emissions and ensuring ethical and sustainable practice,” said co-author Professor Alexandra Brintrup from Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing.

For almost a century, only aggregated data – such as the average values of entire sectors – could be analysed. Predicting how individual company failures would aﬀect the system was simply not possible. What happens to the economy when a speciﬁc company stops its production? What if an earthquake paralyses an entire region?

“Now, a combination of new micro-datasets, methods based in machine learning, and multiple government initiatives are creating the ability to map entire economies, which can give us the tools to answer some fundamental questions with real and timely impact,” said Brintrup.

Although the volume of data is vast – there are approximately 300 million companies worldwide, each with an average of 40 domestic suppliers, resulting in up to 13 billion supply connections – researchers can map the connections between individual companies.

Currently, value-added tax (VAT) data is the most promising option for reconstructing reliable large-scale supply networks. Countries including Spain, Hungary and Belgium use a standardised VAT collection that practically records all domestic business-to-business (b2b) transactions. With these, it’s possible to map the entire national trade of a country.

In most countries like Germany, Austria, or France, where VAT is not collected for individual b2b transactions but only accumulated over a speciﬁc period, such mapping is not possible.

“ ̽��ֱ��standardised b2b collection could reduce administrative overheads for companies and would contribute substantially to tax compliance,” said co-author Christian Diem, also from CSH. Estimates suggest that VAT-related fraudulent activities in the European Union (EU) amount to €130 billion annually.

Beyond tax evasion, other global challenges also depend on the detailed knowledge of supply networks. “For individual companies, it’s nearly impossible to ensure that all trading partners, their suppliers, and their suppliers’ suppliers operate in an environmentally friendly way and in compliance with human rights,” said Pichler. “If this were centrally documented in a gigantic network, it could be more easily ensured.”

̽��ֱ��next step is to link trade data from diﬀerent countries. Currently, the EU records trade in goods between its member states at the company level. If it also included services and linked them with VAT data, this could lead to a comprehensive cross-border company-level network. According to the authors, this would represent almost 20% of the global GDP.

̽��ֱ��European Commission laid the legal foundation by proposing ‘VAT in the Digital Age.’ “Unfortunately, this is far from being realised,” said co-author Stefan Thurner, of the Complexity Science Hub. “So far, we do not have a single situation where the supply chain networks of any two countries have been joined and merged. This would be an essential next step.”

To create a truly international picture of supply interconnections, hundreds of datasets must be joined, analytical tools developed, and an institutional framework must be created, together with secure infrastructure for storing and processing enormous amounts of sensitive data.

“To advance this endeavour, a strong international alliance of various interest groups is required, including national governments, statistical oﬃces, international organisations, central banks, the private sector, and academia,” said Thurner. ̽��ֱ��ﬁrst collaboration in science, involving authors in macroeconomics, supply chain research, and statistics, now aims to establish a foundation. ̽��ֱ��researchers hope to inspire others to join their eﬀorts.

̽��ֱ��researchers hosted representatives of European ministries, national banks, statistical oﬃces, and researchers at a workshop in Vienna on 5–6 June 2023.

Reference:
Anton Pichler et al. ‘Building an alliance to map global supply networks.’ Science (2023). DOI: 10.1126/science.adi7521

Adapted from a CSH press release.

̽��ֱ��COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the interconnected nature of global supply chains, and showed how a disruption in one part of the world can have global effects. In 2021, supply disruptions were cost the global economy an estimated $1.9 trillion.

Understanding supply chain interdependencies between companies, sectors, and countries is vital for many challenges

Alexandra Brintrup

Abstract Aerial Art via Getty Images

Aerial shot of parked trucks, Scunthorpe, United Kingdom

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Robots cause company profits to fall – at least at first

sc604 — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 10:05:12 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, studied industry data from the UK and 24 other European countries between 1995 and 2017, and found that at low levels of adoption, robots have a negative effect on profit margins. But at higher levels of adoption, robots can help increase profits.

According to the researchers, this U-shaped phenomenon is due to the relationship between reducing costs, developing new processes and innovating new products. While many companies first adopt robotic technologies to decrease costs, this ‘process innovation’ can be easily copied by competitors, so at low levels of robot adoption, companies are focused on their competitors rather than on developing new products. However, as levels of adoption increase and robots are fully integrated into a company’s processes, the technologies can be used to increase revenue by innovating new products.

In other words, firms using robots are likely to focus initially on streamlining their processes before shifting their emphasis to product innovation, which gives them greater market power via the ability to differentiate from their competitors. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.

Robots have been widely used in industry since the 1980s, especially in sectors where they can carry out physically demanding, repetitive tasks, such as automotive assembly. In the decades since, the rate of robot adoption has increased dramatically and consistently worldwide, and the development of precise, electrically controlled robots makes them particularly useful for high-value manufacturing applications requiring greater precision, such as electronics.

While robots have been shown to reliably raise labour productivity at an industry or country level, what has been less studied is how robots affect profit margins at a similar macro scale.

“If you look at how the introduction of computers affected productivity, you actually see a slowdown in productivity growth in the 1970s and early 1980s, before productivity starts to rise again, which it did until the financial crisis of 2008,” said co-author Professor Chander Velu from Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing. “It’s interesting that a tool meant to increase productivity had the opposite effect, at least at first. We wanted to know whether there is a similar pattern with robotics.”

“We wanted to know whether companies were using robots to improve processes within the firm, rather than improve the whole business model,” said co-author Dr Philip Chen. “Profit margin can be a useful way to analyse this.”

̽��ֱ��researchers examined industry-level data for 25 EU countries (including the UK, which was a member at the time) between 1995 and 2017. While the data did not drill down to the level of individual companies, the researchers were able to look at whole sectors, primarily in manufacturing where robots are commonly used.

̽��ֱ��researchers then obtained robotics data from the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) database. By comparing the two sets of data, they were able to analyse the effect of robotics on profit margins at a country level.

“Intuitively, we thought that more robotic technologies would lead to higher profit margins, but the fact that we see this U-shaped curve instead was surprising,” said Chen.

“Initially, firms are adopting robots to create a competitive advantage by lowering costs,” said Velu. “But process innovation is cheap to copy, and competitors will also adopt robots if it helps them make their products more cheaply. This then starts to squeeze margins and reduce profit margin.”

̽��ֱ��researchers then carried out a series of interviews with an American medical equipment manufacturer to study their experiences with robot adoption.

“We found that it’s not easy to adopt robotics into a business – it costs a lot of money to streamline and automate processes,” said Chen.

“When you start bringing more and more robots into your process, eventually you reach a point where your whole process needs to be redesigned from the bottom up,” said Velu. “It’s important that companies develop new processes at the same time as they’re incorporating robots, otherwise they will reach this same pinch point.”

̽��ֱ��researchers say that if companies want to reach the profitable side of the U-shaped curve more quickly, it’s important that the business model is adapted concurrently with robot adoption. Only after robots are fully integrated into the business model can companies fully use the power of robotics to develop new products, driving profits.

A related piece of work being led by the Institute for Manufacturing is a community programme to help small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEEs) to adopt digital technologies including robotics in a low-cost, low-risk way. “Incremental and step changes in this area enable SMEs to get the benefits of cost reduction as well as margin improvements from new products,” said co-author Professor Duncan McFarlane.

̽��ֱ��research was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), which are both part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Chander Velu is a Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge. Duncan McFarlane is a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge.

Reference:
Yifeng P Chen, Chander Velu, Duncan McFarlane. ‘ ̽��ֱ��Effect of Robot Adoption on Profit Margins.’ IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management (2023). DOI: 10.1109/TEM.2023.3260734

Researchers have found that robots can have a ‘U-shaped’ effect on profits: causing profit margins to fall at first, before eventually rising again.

It’s important that companies develop new processes at the same time as they’re incorporating robots, otherwise they will reach this same pinch point

Chander Velu

kynny via Getty Images

Robots on a manufacturing line

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Changing how we talk — and think — about manufacturing

sc604 — Tue, 17 Jan 2023 15:50:09 +0000

Professor Tim Minshall, Head of Cambridge's Institute for Manufacturing, says it's time for a change in how we talk about manufacturing in the UK - and that means we must change how we think about it as well.

Former coal mining communities have less faith in politics than other 'left behind' areas

fpjl2 — Mon, 20 Sep 2021 08:30:26 +0000

Communities once reliant on the coal industry are now more politically disenchanted, with residents less likely to vote, than places with similar levels of deprivation but without the “narrative of decline” that holds sway in former mining areas.

Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Cardiff Business School used survey data on social and political attitudes gathered across Britain between 2009-2019, a decade dominated by austerity and Brexit.

̽��ֱ��team identified neighbourhoods that had seen large numbers employed by the coal industry in the early 1980s. Survey respondents from these areas were 'matched' to respondents with similar personal characteristics, income levels and education from locations with comparable levels of poverty – but no history of mining.

̽��ֱ��overall trend revealed that people now living in communities once dependent on coalmining are less engaged in – and feel far less knowledgeable about – politics than those in equivalent 'left behind' neighbourhoods.

Residents of coalfield areas are less likely than their socio-economic counterparts to have voted in the last election, are much less likely to say they intend to vote in future, and believe the same to be true of their neighbours.

They are also more cynical about the overall effectiveness of democracy, and more likely to believe that “public officials don’t care”.

Self-reported mental health was found to be significantly lower in former mining communities than in similarly deprived areas, while scepticism towards climate change was slightly higher, as was a positive attitude towards working mothers.

̽��ֱ��study, published in the journal Applied Geography, used responses from over 14,000 individuals who were surveyed every year.

“Narratives of decline loom large in the current identity of old mining areas, even though the working lives of most residents started long after the pits closed,” said study co-author Dr Maria Abreu from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

“For people in communities that saw sudden and rapid economic decay, there appears to be an increased insularity and distrust of political systems compared to those who are also deprived, but do not have a shared local history of decline.”

̽��ֱ��study shows an uptick of political engagement over the Brexit campaign period, with ex-mining areas leaning towards Leave. But even Brexit doesn’t raise political interest to the level seen in comparable locations beyond the referendum campaign period.

In fact, political engagement continues to climb in other ‘left behind’ areas, while in the former mining communities it drops off again after 2017.

This discontent with contemporary politics also extends to newer populist and nationalist parties. While they favoured Leave in the referendum, those in coalfield communities are still less likely to vote for UKIP, the SNP or Plaid Cymru than those in other areas with similar social and economic struggles.

“It seems that the modern Left may not have lost the people in former mining communities to populism or emerging nationalist parties, but rather apathy and cynicism,” said Abreu, from Cambridge’s Department of Land Economy.

In addition, and contrary to cinematic depictions and public perceptions, the research didn’t detect any greater sense of community cohesion in former mining neighbourhoods compared to other economically depressed areas.

“It’s been over thirty years since large numbers of people went underground for work, plenty of time for strong social relationships to dwindle,” said co-author Dr Calvin Jones from Cardiff Business School. “Loss of solidarity among these communities may have been compounded by austerity in recent years.”

“However, it is also possible that the other deprived communities to which we compared former mining areas – from housing estates to rundown seaside towns – actually have higher levels of social cohesion than might be expected.”

̽��ֱ��study used individual-level data from the last decade, collected by the Understanding Society survey (UK Longitudinal Household Survey). ̽��ֱ��researchers broke this down into small census areas – neighbourhoods of around 1,500 people – and combined it with other socio-economic data to match individuals living in coalmining areas to those in other areas with comparable levels of deprivation, welfare spending, and ruralness.

To define former coalmining communities, Abreu and Jones used 1981 census data to identify areas where at least 10% of adult males had been employed in the “Energy and Water” sector, and overlaid this with geological maps to whittle down to those neighbourhoods within 10 miles of bedrock coal deposits.

Communities that met these criteria are dotted across much of the north and midlands, with particular concentrations found in South Wales, northeast England and Tyneside, the Lanarkshire coalfields south of Glasgow, and the midlands between Nottingham and Leeds.

Those in ex-mining areas are also less likely to vote for new populist and nationalist parties compared to socio-economic counterparts elsewhere. Researchers argue that the modern Left may have lost these communities to “apathy and cynicism”.

Narratives of decline loom large in the current identity of old mining areas, even though the working lives of most residents started long after the pits closed

Maria Abreu

It's No Game via Flickr

̽��ֱ��remains of the former pit at Pleasley, near Mansfield.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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