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CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION

Land sector impacts of early climate action

Nature Sustainability volume 4, pages 1021–1022 (2021)Cite this article

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Integrated assessment models are widely used to assess climate change mitigation strategies. Comparing scenarios from several integrated assessment models, a study now highlights the benefits and trade-offs of near-term mitigation to reduce mitigation challenges in the longer term.

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere, counterbalancing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, is an essential mitigation option in most modelled scenarios that limit global warming to 1.5–2 °C by 2100. Upscaling of CDR combined with ongoing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reduction could achieve net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, enabling the return from temporary exceedance of the warming threshold (overshoot) by the end of the century. Afforestation, reforestation (A/R) and other measures that enhance carbon storage in soils and vegetation already provide land-based CDR. Other options, for example, enhancement of the ocean’s natural carbon sink and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), are not yet implemented at scale. Writing in Nature Sustainability, Hasegawa and colleagues1 report that strong near-term climate change mitigation to avoid overshoot has multiple benefits and trade-offs. The need for large-scale deployment of land-based CDR late in this century, enabling return from overshoot but involving drastic changes in land use, would be averted. However, competition for land could intensify in the coming decades. The number of people at risk of hunger in later decades would be smaller, but probably substantially larger in the medium term.

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Fig. 1

Uma Karki, Tuskegee University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Göran Berndes

  2. NSW Department of Primary Industries and University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales, Australia

    Annette Cowie

Authors
  1. Göran Berndes
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  2. Annette Cowie
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Correspondence to Göran Berndes or Annette Cowie.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Berndes, G., Cowie, A. Land sector impacts of early climate action. Nat Sustain 4, 1021–1022 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00777-5

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