In Response to Climate Change, Governments are Relying on Land for Carbon Dioxide Removal.
We calculated how much land is included in pledges: around 1 billion ha. That's about two thirds of the world's arable land.
This report looks at how Governments are using land in climate pledges.
An international team analyzed commitments made for years 2030, 2050, and 2060 — looking at national pledges and the implications for land use.
The analysis shows that countries’ climate pledges rely on unrealistic amounts of land-based carbon removal. These cannot be achieved without significant negative impacts on livelihoods, land rights, and ecosystems.
Only a few of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and mid-century climate plans were very detailed in the treatment of land use. One important finding is that the countries proposing the greatest amount of land to meet a ‘net zero’ or decarbonization target are also among the largest users and exporters of fossil fuels. In all, just a handful of high and upper-middle income countries are responsible for over 85 per cent of total land use required to deliver climate pledges.
The 2022 Land Gap Report also examines the importance of protecting all remaining primary ecosystems; securing land rights for communities; and shifting to agroecology in food production.
The 2022 Land Gap Report shows how implementation of countries’ climate plans increases total demand for land. The Report quantifies this aggregate demand for land and land-use change to address climate mitigation in the climate pledges submitted by countries to the United Nations.
The 2023 update to the Land Gap report improves on this data, examining new country pledges and further analyzing existing pledges.
The 2024 Nature Communications publication provides a peer-reviewed assessment of national climate pledges, and extends the assessment to all pledges submitted by the end of 2023.
Key Messages
Country climate pledges reveal unrealistic expectations for land-use change. Some high income, major emitters account for nearly all land-based carbon dioxide removal in climate pledges. This increases the risk of overshooting warming thresholds and of dangerous climate impacts. The legitimacy of net zero climate goals is dependent on rapid decarbonization rather than over-relying on removals particularly from land
Data Visualizations
The data page shows the distribution of global land-based carbon dioxide removal pledges. It also allows users to dig deeper into the data to see the types of activities pledged by each country, and how significant each pledge is in comparison to existing agricultural and forested land.
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