Land, agriculture and human diets are required to be used in a more sustainable and climate-friendly way to limit greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), leading researchers on Thursday said in a high-level report commissioned by the United Nations.
The special report on Climate and Land Use by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released in Geneva on Thursday highlighted the need to protect remaining tropical forests as a bulkhead against future warning.
“Land is where we live,” IPCC co-chair Hoesung Lee said adding that “Land is under growing human pressure and land is part of the solution, but land cannot do it all.”
“This is a perfect storm. Limited land, an expanding human population, and all wrapped in a suffocating blanket of climate emergency,” added Dave Reay, Professor of Carbon Management at the University of Edinburgh.
While fossil fuel burning for energy generation and transport garners the most attention, activities relating to land management, including agriculture and forestry, produce almost a quarter of heat-trapping gases. The race to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels ? the goal of the international Paris climate agreement reached in 2015 ? might be a lost battle unless land is used in a more sustainable and climate-friendly way, the IPCC report said.
The report highlights the need to preserve and restore forests, which soak up carbon from the air, and peat lands, which release carbon if dug up. The report noted that while there are currently two billion overweight or obese adults, 820 million people still don’t get enough calories.
In addition, a third of all food produced is currently either lost or wasted, adding to mankind’s carbon footprint.
The IPCC summary paper mostly steered clear of the controversial call to limit meat consumption, but did burnish the credentials of “plant-based foods” and their ability to mitigate global emissions.
“Some diets require more land and water and lead to higher emissions than others,” said IPCC co-chair Jim Skea. The far-reaching study by more than 100 authors from 52 countries was finalised on Wednesday in Geneva after nearly a week of negotiations between scientists and policy-makers from 195 countries. The authors examined thousands of studies over almost three years to better assess the links between climate change, food security, land degradation and desertification, which is the process of land degradation in dry land areas.
The IPCC last October looked at the steps needed to limit global warming to 1.5 deg C, a key goal of the Paris Climate Agreement. It concluded that deep emission cuts are needed before 2030 to achieve this.
While last year’s report looked at the sources of emissions, this year the focus is on how human activity is eroding the planet’s natural defences to climate change.
