Agricultural systems in the 21st Century face the double challenge of achieving climate neutrality while maintaining food security. Synthetic fertilizers rich in nitrogen (N-fertilizers) boost agricultural production at the expense of increasing climate impact. Public policies, such as the Farm-to-Fork (F2F) Strategy, aim to reduce the extensive use of N-fertilizers with the ultimate goal of achieving a climate neutral European Union (EU). However, the strong link between N-fertilizers and GHG emissions (i.e., CO2, CH4 and, especially, N2O) highlights the need to better understand the climate impact of this sector. The present study conducts a climate impact analysis of Spanish N-fertilizer sector for two periods: (i) from 1960 to 2020 using real data and (ii) from 2021 to 2100 considering five forecasted scenarios. The scenarios range from business-as-usual practices to a full accomplishment of the goals pursued by the EU\'s F2F strategy. The system\'s climate stability and neutrality are analysed for the different scenarios based on radiative forcing (RF) metrics. Additionally, the study evaluates the short-term impact of the EU decarbonization goals on the climate impact of the Spanish N-fertilizer sector. The results of the study illustrate that the long-lasting climate impact of N2O and CO2 emissions compromise the capacity of N-fertilizer sector to achieve climate stability and approach climate neutrality. However, the decarbonisation of transport and N-fertilizer production activities is an important driver to substantially reduce the life cycle CH4 and CO2 emissions in the Spanish N-fertilizer sector. The results also highlight that more severe reductions on N-cycles than those suggested by the EU\'s F2F are required, especially to reduce the long-lasting N2O emissions in the N-fertilizer sector. Overall, the study concludes that using RF-based metrics increases robustness and transparency of climate assessments, which is necessary for a higher integration of climate science within public policymaking.

Pollution by agricultural pesticides is one of the most important pressures affecting Mediterranean coastal wetlands. Pesticide risks are expected to be influenced by climate change, which will result in an increase of temperatures and a decrease in annual precipitation. On the other hand, pesticide dosages are expected to change given the increase in pest resistance and the implementation of environmental policies like the European ´Farm-to-Fork` strategy, which aims for a 50 % reduction in pesticide usage by 2030. The influence of climate change and pesticide use practices on the ecological risks of pesticides needs to be evaluated making use of realistic environmental scenarios. This study investigates how different climate change and pesticide use practices affect the ecological risks of pesticides in the Albufera Natural Park (Valencia, Spain), a protected Mediterranean coastal wetland. We performed a probabilistic risk assessment for nine pesticides applied in rice production using three climatic scenarios (for the years 2008, 2050 and 2100), three pesticide dosage regimes (the recommended dose, and 50 % increase and 50 % decrease), and their combinations. The scenarios were used to simulate pesticide exposure concentrations in the water column of the rice paddies using the RICEWQ model. Pesticide effects were characterized using acute and chronic Species Sensitivity Distributions built with toxicity data for aquatic organisms. Risk quotients were calculated as probability distributions making use of Bayesian networks. Our results show that future climate projections will influence exposure concentrations for some of the studied pesticides, yielding higher dissipation and lower exposure in scenarios dominated by an increase of temperatures, and higher exposure peaks in scenarios where heavy precipitation events occur right after pesticide application. Our case study shows that pesticides such as azoxystrobin, difenoconazole and MCPA are posing unacceptable ecological risks for aquatic organisms, and that the implementation of the ´Farm-to-Fork` strategy is crucial to reduce them.