This week I’ve been thinking about global land use, as I’ve been preparing a workshop on that theme for an upcoming youth climate conference. It’s interactive and uses Lego, and I’ll have to tell you more about it another time. One of the key learning points for the young people who’ll be taking part is that there is growing pressure on land. Arable land is declining due to climate change and soil erosion, while a growing human population is adding to demand. Where do we find new land for growing food?
One thing the workshop doesn’t cover is offsets, because that’s another complication to global land demand. As countries set net zero targets, many of them have written in offsets as part of their plan. They’ll reduce emissions to a certain extent, and then they’ll offset the rest.
The problem is that everybody has been banking on offsets, and nobody is responsible for the total and whether or not it’s possible. When the Land Gap Report stopped to check, they found that government pledges called 1.2 billion hectares of land for their offset plans.
Of that 1.2 billion, around half would be needed for forestry projects. The remaining 551 million hectares were listed as land restoration.
To put these figures in context, the United States is 983 million hectares, and we could add on Mexico to bring it closer to 1.2 billion hectares. That’s around the same amount of land as all the world’s agriculture put together. Looking for that amount of new land to restore or reforest is like looking for a whole new continent for our carbon removals. It simply isn’t available.
A child could tell you that, though the Land Gap Report is very measured in its tone and simply says it’s “deeply unrealistic”. The problem is that many countries will nevertheless try, and that will drive competition for global land. In countries with weak land rights, local communities or indigenous people may find themselves dispossessed in order to satisfy a carbon target on the other side of the world. There may be further competition for farmland – and bear in mind that alongside demand for offsets, there is land demand for biofuels too.
Is there any way out of this? The report points out that agroforestry offers opportunities to grow crops and reforest at the same time, which is helpful. Only 20 countries have agroforestry as part of their cliamte plans, Malawi being a leader on that particular front. The report doesn’t mention ocean-based offsets, which may create some wriggle room but are currently unregulated and vague. Neither does it explore the possibility of reducing global meat consumption, which might free up pasture land for reforestation.
None of these things claw back enough land to make this 1.2 billion figure remotely viable, and so the main takeaway is that we cannot depend so heavily on offsets. While there will always be regions that need them and so we can’t dismiss offsets entirely, the priority has to be carbon reductions.
The Earthbound Report 
Agroforestry sounds both fascinating and difficult. Am going to look into it. Tx 4 another interesting post!
Offsets sound great, but you are right in pointing out that they are not realistic.
Just as in recycling, the best way is to not use it in the first place.
I just don’t know how we are going to avoid putting all of this carbon into the atmosphere. No one is willing to pay the price.
Earth will eventually force drastic things on us and we will have no choice. But until we are on the brink of catastrophe, everyone just talks and dances around the edges.