Current research projects
Governing nutrient pollution beyond farmers
Nutrient pollution is one of the most important threats facing the environment and human health. Fueled by the exponential rise in synthetic fertilizer and manure use, nitrogen and phosphorus losses make almost every major environmental and human health problem worse. And yet these nutrients are also essential inputs and therefore crucial to agricultural production. Managing this delicate balance between environmental protection and agricultural production is the central challenge of agricultural nutrient pollution governance. However, the narrow focus of most agricultural nutrient pollution policies on changing farmer behavior ignores the underlying forces that constrain their behavior. This has led to policies which have been largely ineffective around the world. The “Governing Nutrient Pollution Beyond Farmers” project aims to build the scientific foundation for a new governance framework, centered around all the major actors in the agri-food system that influence farm-level nutrient management decisions – from fertilizer manufacturers to supermarkets.This project has received funding from the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Conference Research Programme (OECD CRP) and the French Institutes for Advanced Study (FIAS).
Climate action on land
Land management over the coming decade and beyond will be a key determinant in mitigating and adapting to the global climate crisis. These management decisions will positively and negatively influence a range of other desired outcomes: from protecting and restoring nature, to producing enough nutritious food for a growing population, to safeguarding indigenous cultures. Consequently, careful planning is needed to ensure that leveraging land systems to address the climate crisis supports widely shared societal goals and does not generate secondary crises. However, we lack a comprehensive theoretical framework to inform both empirical and process-based approaches to understand and evaluate the sometimes competing, sometimes complementary dynamics (often referred to as trade-offs and synergies) that underpin land’s myriad climatological, ecological, agricultural, and cultural roles across society. This limits our ability to make good decisions regarding climate action on land. With colleagues in the NYU Department of Environmental Studies we are hoping to create a new Center for Climate Action on Land, with the aim of developing and applying interdisciplinary, use-inspired framework to support land management decisions from local to global scales as humanity grapples with climate change
nitrous oxide and stratospheric ozone depletion
Nitrous oxide (N2O) is the third most abundantly emitted greenhouse gas in the world and the largest remaining threat to the stratospheric ozone layer. It has been ignored in environmental policy discussions for decades despite being identified as an ozone depleting substance prior to CFCs and included as one of six greenhouse gases under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. National and global climate mitigation efforts tend to focus carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4), reflected in new national commitments and the global methane pledge to reduce emissions by 30% by 2030 presented at COP 26 in Glasgow. And yet, mitigation efforts that exclude N2O could make it much harder, if not impossible, to meet a range of climate, ozone and sustainable development objectives. This project aims to explore such a future, analyzing the environmental and human health effects of policy efforts that would moderately or ambitiously reduce CO2 and CH4 while ignoring N2O. This project has three research objectives: 1) calculate the impact of decoupled emissions scenarios on stratospheric ozone concentrations and global surface temperatures; 2) examine the human health impacts of N2O-induced ozone depletion; and 3) estimate the broader effect of increasing N2O emissions on all major N pollution flows. Methods for each of these objectives are briefly described below.
Select Publications (Google Scholar profile)
Kanter D.R., Wagner-Riddle C., Groffman P.M., Davidson E.A., Galloway J.N., Gourevitch J.D., van Grinsven H.J.M., Houlton B.Z., Keeler B.L., Ogle S.M., Pearen H., Rennert K.J., Saifuddin M., Sobota D.J., Wagner G. 2021 Improving the social cost of nitrous oxide. Nature Climate Change, 11:1008-1010
Kanter D.R., Del Grosso S.J., Scheer C., Pelster D., Galloway J.N. 2020. Why future nitrogen research needs the social sciences. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. 47:54-60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2020.07.002
Kanter D.R., Chodos O., Nordland O., Rutigliano M., Winiwarter W. 2020. Gaps and opportunities in nitrogen pollution policies around the world. Nature Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0577-7
Kanter D.R., Ogle S., Winiwarter W. 2020. Building on Paris: Integrating nitrous oxide mitigation into future climate policy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. 47:7-12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2020.04.005
Kanter D.R., Winiwarter W., Bodirsky B.L., Bouwman L., Boyer E., Buckle S., Compton J.E., Dalgaard T., de Vries W., Leclère D., Leip A., Müller C., Popp A., Raghuram N., Rao S., Sutton M.A., Tian H., Westhoek H., Zhang X., Zurek M. 2020. A framework for nitrogen futures in the shared socioeconomic pathways. Global Environmental Change, 61:102029. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.102029
Kanter D.R., Leip A., Oenema O., Uziweye A., Kugelberg S., Bartolini F. 2019. Nitrogen pollution policy beyond the farm. Nature Food. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-019-0001-5
Kanter D.R. and Brownlie W. 2019. Joint nitrogen and phosphorus management for sustainable development and climate goals. Environmental Science and Policy, 92:1-8
Kanter D.R. and Searchinger T. 2018. A technology-forcing approach to reduce nitrogen pollution. Nature Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0143-8
Kanter D.R. 2018. Nitrogen pollution: a key building block for addressing climate change. Climatic Change. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-017-2126-6
Kanter D.R., Wentz J., Galloway J., Moomaw W.R., Winiwarter, W. 2017. Managing a forgotten greenhouse gas: An interdisciplinary analysis. Environmental Science and Policy. 67:44-51
Kanter D.R., Musumba M., Palm C., Andelman S., Antle J., Balvanera P., Havlik P., Thorne P., Thornton P., Tittonnell P. 2016. Evaluating agricultural trade-offs in the age of sustainable development. Agricultural Systems, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2016.09.010
Kanter D.R., Schwoob M., Baethgen W., Dobermann A. et al. 2016. Translating the Sustainable Development Goals into action: A participatory backcasting approach for developing national agricultural transformation pathways. Global Food Security, 10:71-79
Kanter D.R., Zhang X., Shevliakova E., Malyshev S., Mauzerall D.L. 2016. The importance of climate change and nitrogen use efficiency for future nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture. Environmental Research Letters, 11 (2016) 094003
Kanter D.R., Zhang X., Mauzerall D.L. 2015. Reducing agricultural nitrogen pollution while decreasing farmers’ costs and increasing fertilizer industry profits. Journal of Environmental Quality, 44(2):325-335
Kanter D.R., Mauzerall D.L., Ravishankara A.R., Daniel J.S., Portmann R.W., Grabiel P., Moomaw W., Galloway J.N. 2013. A post-Kyoto partner: Considering the stratospheric ozone regime as a tool to manage nitrous oxide. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 110(12):4451-4457