The Land Gap Report
Governments’ over-reliance on carbon removals could push ecosystems, land rights, and food security to the brink, with new land area equivalent to 50 percent of the world’s croplands currently being required to meet targets. Climate pledges should focus on protecting and restoring existing ecosystems with carbon benefits.
Report link: The Land Gap Report (2022)
The growing push for climate mitigation has given rise to a new urgency around land use. Countries making 'net zero' pledges make up the vast majority of global greenhouse gas emissions. Additional 'net zero' pledges are coming from non-state actors, especially the private sector. These pledges usually rely on land-based carbon dioxide removals which are then used to offset a theoretical equivalent amount of fossil fuel emissions in national greenhouse gas inventories.
This Land Gap Report shows how countries' climate plans, if implemented, will increase the aggregate demands made on land. The report quantifies the aggregate demand for land and land-use change to address climate mitigation in the climate pledges submitted by Parties to the UNFCCC. A key finding is that countries' climate pledges assume that almost 1.2 billion hectares of land can be prioritized for carbon dioxide removal.
Even more concerning is that roughly half the land pledged for climate mitigation (633 million hectares) requires a land-use change, mostly through plantations and other tree-growing schemes. This could compromise the rights and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
Lead editor: Clare Pedrick
Contributing authors: Kate Dooley (U Melbourne), Jens Friis Lund (U Copenhagen), Kirstine Lund-Christiansen (U Copenhagen), Wim Carton (Lund U), Wim Carton (Lund U), Yann Robiou du Pont (U Melbourne), Muhammad Luqman (CSIRO), Nathan Ivetic (U Melbourne), Heather Keith (Griffith U), Brendan Mackey (Griffith U), Virginia Young (Griffith U), Sonia Hugh (Griffith U), Anne Larson (CIFOR), Alain Frechette (RRI), Hemant Ojha (U Canberra), Jens Friis Lund (U Copenhagen), Iliana Monterroso (CIFOR), Kimaren Riamit (ILEPA), Ojong Enokenwa Baa (CIFOR), Georgina Catacora-Vargas (Bolivian Catholic U), Ivette Perfecto (U Michigan), Lim Li Ching (Third World Network)