Removing CO2 from the atmosphere using land-based mitigation strategies is central to nearly every country’s net-zero target.
To mitigate global climate change, land-use and land-management sectors need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and remove carbon from the atmosphere.
Protecting ecosystems and dedicating more land to nature-based solutions and climate-smart agricultural practices are promising ways to do so.
To date, there has been little work looking at where, specifically, these strategies may be in conflict with one another.
Our research, published in Global Change Biology, assesses opportunity costs among 19 different land-use strategies for climate mitigation.
We find that roughly 8.5bn hectares of land around the globe are suitable for at least one land-based mitigation strategy – representing about 60% of the Earth’s land surface.
However, almost 40% of this land is suitable for more than one mitigation strategy, presenting decisionmakers with a choice as to which strategy or strategies they should deploy.
Land-based mitigation
To achieve global climate targets in a timely manner, some studies call for up to 10% of Earth’s terrestrial surface to undergo a land-cover change.
But is there actually enough land to make this happen? And if there is, how can projects be scaled up strategically to maximise the mitigation benefits while minimising negative impacts on humans and biodiversity?
Disciplinary silos and practical uncertainties have previously made these questions hard to answer.
For instance, nature-based solutions, including habitat conservation and restoration, are often differentiated from other climate-motivated land-use practices, such as bioenergy cropping and afforestation. Yet, both types of practices can have significant trade-offs for biodiversity and for agriculture.
Although controversial, these types of climate-specific land-use changes are proposed in many national climate mitigation plans. As these plans are put in motion, the trade-offs that could result from increasing the land dedicated to certain strategies over others need careful consideration.
In our study, we assess land-use opportunity costs across a portfolio of 19 different strategies for climate mitigation.
Broadly speaking, these strategies can be classified into four main approaches to mitigation: maintaining or protecting ecosystems, modifying forestry or agricultural management practices, restoring ecosystems and converting land to increase biomass.
Of these, certain approaches and strategies can be used to avoid emissions, while others can be used to sequester carbon.
Among the strategies we studied are the protection and restoration of forest, wetland, peatland and grassland habitats, various approaches to climate-smart cropland and forestry management (including biochar and silvopasture), bioenergy cropping with carbon capture and storage and afforestation.
We used global datasets on forests, croplands and other habitat types alongside data on environmental conditions such as temperature to estimate how much of the global land area is suitable for each strategy.
Then, we created global maps at a one kilometre resolution that identify areas that could be considered for these measures.
Land potentials
We find that some strategies had large regions of suitability.
For example, deforestation and other types of habitat loss are a large contributor to greenhouse gas emissions from the land-use sector. Maintaining grassland and forest habitat types to prevent losses can be done anywhere that such loss is occurring.
Maintaining the carbon stored in ecosystems that are currently unprotected accounts for more than 3bn hectares of the land we estimate as suitable for land-based climate mitigation – equal to about 20% of the Earth’s land surface.
Other strategies, including peatland restoration and silvopasture, had much more restricted areas of suitability across the globe.
For peatland restoration, priority areas are primarily distributed in the boreal zone – the high-latitude northern hemisphere, just south of the Arctic. Cropland expansion has led to widespread peatland loss in this region over the past several decades.
For silvopasture – a type of livestock farming that integrates tree cover with grazing – suitability is primarily constrained by environmental limits on tree growth. Here, factors such as water availability determine in which regions traditional pastoral systems could be converted to silvopasture.
The figure below shows the 19 mitigation strategies we studied and the area of the Earth that is suitable for each, in millions of hectares. The three maps on the right show example distributions for (from top to bottom) enhanced chemical weathering, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and integrating trees into croplands.
Conflict potential
When summing the suitable area across all the 19 strategies we examined, we find that a huge area of Earth – almost 60% of its land surface – is theoretically suitable for land-based climate mitigation.
However, the majority of this area captures regions where more than one mitigation strategy is suitable.
In some cases, these overlapping land potentials involve mitigation strategies that can be deployed jointly, such as increasing the carbon stored in soils at the same time as increasing the carbon stored in aboveground biomass.
One example of this is the potential to collectively implement enhanced chemical weathering and improved plantation management, which have a combined land suitability of 348m hectares.
(Enhanced chemical weathering involves spreading ground-up silicate rocks onto farms or other land. This speeds up natural chemical processes and removes CO2 from the atmosphere, while also improving crop yields.)
However, suitable areas for compatible strategies were rare, compared to the area where conflicts between strategies could occur.
For instance, large portions of the US, Europe and China are suitable for both ecosystem restoration and climate-smart agriculture.
In these regions, societies face a choice between restoring grassland, forest and wetland habitats, or continuing to manage the land for agriculture, where climate-smart practices could still be implemented to decrease greenhouse gas emissions or sequester more carbon.
Because the choice between large-scale restoration and climate-smart agriculture may involve a trade-off between restoring habitat for biodiversity or maintaining land use for people, we avoid making any recommendations about which land-use practices to implement.
Rather, our paper highlights areas where these trade-offs could occur – places in which large-scale top-down planning could conflict with local priorities for land-use.
More research is needed to map local constraints and management costs so that the choice between mitigation strategies aligns local needs with national and global targets for climate mitigation.
Opportunity costs
So, with these potential overlaps and conflicts, is there enough land to meet climate targets?
The answer is yes, in theory – the summed area we estimate as suitable for climate mitigation is more than double the amount of land that has been pledged for transformation by UN member countries in their pledges to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.
However, the pace of on-the-ground implementation lags far behind the degree of land-use change needed to limit warming by 2050. And high-level constraints, such as meagre financing or a lack of political incentives, will continue to stall progress.
Given these choices and constraints, land-use opportunity costs should be considered when planning policies that may incentivise certain types of mitigation practices that could inadvertently displace opportunities for others.
As plans to reach net-zero continue to develop, the atlas of maps for mitigation practices – and the exploration of opportunity costs – can guide pathways for scaling up land-based mitigation to address climate change.
The post Guest post: The conflicting practices in using land to tackle climate change appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Guest post: The conflicting practices in using land to tackle climate change
Amira Odeh Quiñones is a hydrologist and Caribbean organiser for the 350.org climate campaign group
El Niño, likely to be one of the strongest in modern history, has arrived on Caribbean shores.
Drought is slowly creeping up on our islands. But unlike the fiery wildfires ravaging parts of Europe, there’s no smoke signalling the damage being done, no sirens to warn of the danger. Only announcements from public health officials to stay indoors and remain hydrated — as if outdoor workers and farming communities have the luxury to heed such advice.
During El Niño, strong atmospheric winds alter rain patterns and trap heat across the Caribbean. But while we have experienced El Niño many times before, it has become very visible in recent years how climate change is making this natural phenomenon worse.
Across the Greater Antilles, temperatures are soaring past 38°C (100°F), with real-feel indexes reaching a gruelling 43°C in parts of Puerto Rico where I live. Cuba has it worse. Widespread power outages mean that methods for cooling down are unavailable for most of the day, leaving millions of vulnerable people at risk of heat stroke when temperatures hit 38°C.
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During the last strong drought a decade ago, I had water only two days a week in my home. Today, there are many families whose taps are about to run completely dry. Water authorities have already begun strict rationing in some municipalities, with more on the list scheduled for rationing if conditions don’t change.
Water rationing is far more than an inconvenience; it is an immediate health risk. This means thousands of people need to constantly haul heavy buckets up flights of stairs just so they could bathe, cook, stay hydrated – the basics of survival.
Heat causes health problems
Puerto Rico is home to roughly 300,000 elderly residents. Many live alone, isolated and without support. They risk severe physical injury when carrying heavy water containers, and are wont to suffer from silent heat exhaustion in unventilated rooms.
Furthermore, when water shortages force residents to store water in open household containers, it inadvertently creates breeding grounds for Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Paired with scorching temperatures that tend to shorten the mosquito breeding cycle, the region is facing explosive outbreaks of dengue fever that endanger our most vulnerable: children and the elderly.
The economic fallout is equally devastating. Dry fields mean millions of dollars in lost crops, forcing small agricultural businesses to collapse, needing urgent government relief to survive. Extreme fuel shortages have already paralyzed Cuba’s agricultural sector, cutting food output by 60% – the El Niño dry spell threatens to decimate it.
At sea, warmer ocean waters fuel massive influxes of sargassum seaweed. Rotting sargassum chokes our beaches, destroying the local tourism industry that so many working families rely on. Tangled seaweed also damages nets and boat engines, slashing fish catches and driving up equipment costs for local fishers.
In the south of Puerto Rico, the coastal town of La Parguera is currently witnessing a historic amount of sargassum on its shores. This has halted most of the boating activity in the area, which is the seaside town’s main tourist draw and economic driver.
All over the Caribbean, from town halls to local group gatherings, the story I hear is always the same: constant headaches, lost work hours, failing health, and a sense that quality of life is silently being stolen. The compounding effects of heatwaves, drought, and marine destruction are exhausting our people, our islands.
Climate change to blame
Climate change makes each El Niño year hotter and more damaging. Higher baseline global temperatures increase the energy and moisture available for extreme weather. Latest projections show that El Niño may push the monthly global average temperature past 2°C of warming for the first time in early 2027. In the Caribbean islands, that will not just be breaking records – it’ll be breaking lives.
Recently, I had the opportunity to share a panel with climate scientists behind what is known as the field of “attribution science” – or the science that compares today’s climate conditions to what the Earth’s climate would be like without human activity, particularly burning fossil fuels. They’re unequivocal: it’s no longer a question of whether extreme weather is caused by climate change, it’s just a question of how much.
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Attribution science recently got a boost from the U.S.’ top scientific advisory body. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recognized that researchers’ methods have advanced considerably in recent years, resulting in better assessments on how much extreme weather can be attributed to human-caused climate change. It noted that attribution findings could be relevant in some types of legal cases, including those seeking damages from oil companies for climate impacts.
This crisis, which is already taking a heavy toll on our communities’ survival, needs real, urgent, and structural action that goes beyond aid. With similar droughts now gripping parts of Asia and Africa, we’re falling into the familiar narrative of treating the looming humanitarian crisis as if no one was to blame, as if it is being caused solely by a natural phenomenon we can’t control.
It’s not. The world was already on fire before its regular visitor, El Niño, came. While we need humanitarian action, we need climate action too, in order to permanently put out the flames.
The post When taps run dry in the Caribbean, it’s not enough to blame El Niño appeared first on Climate Home News.
When taps run dry in the Caribbean, it’s not enough to blame El Niño
China has released a five-year plan dedicated to addressing climate change.
The 15th five-year plan for a national response to climate change is the latest in a series to outline in-depth climate and energy targets for the 2026-2030 period.
These include five-year plans for “building a Beautiful China”, developing a “new-type energy system” and developing renewable energy.
There are also separate “action plans” for the 2026-2030 period, such as for peaking carbon emissions.
China has pledged to peak its emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality before 2060.
The new plan does not include any major new targets, instead consolidating and reaffirming existing policies.
Nevertheless, it includes significant signals on key policy areas, such as non-carbon dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gases, global climate governance and carbon markets.
Below, Carbon Brief examines some of the notable elements in the latest five-year plan and what it reveals about China’s policy direction through to 2030.
What does the climate plan cover?
The Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) released the plan in late July, in unison with 18 other government departments. These include the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, and the National Energy Administration.
The document covers a range of topics, including CO2 emissions, other greenhouse gases (non-CO2 GHGs), carbon markets, carbon footprints, climate adaptation and international cooperation on climate change.
For the first time at the five-year plan level, the plan creates a comprehensive target system covering all areas of climate policy, say officials in a MEE Q&A.
They describe it as “the main policy instrument” for advancing China’s climate action during 2026-2030.
China rarely issues high-level multi-year policies dedicated to “responding to climate change”. In 2014, the NDRC published a plan on the topic running through to 2020, but this was not linked to a five-year plan period.
Qin Yan, principal analyst at ClearBlue Markets, tells Carbon Brief that the plan shows that China’s climate governance has reached “an unprecedented strategic level”.
She adds that the plan creates an “all-encompassing target system” to support China’s Paris Agreement climate pledges for 2030 and 2035.
In its 2030 pledge, China aimed to peak emissions “before 2030” and reduce carbon intensity – its emissions per unit of GDP – by more than 65% from 2005 levels.
Last year, president Xi Jinping personally announced China’s 2035 pledge to cut China’s greenhouse gas emissions to 7-10% below peak levels by 2035, while “striving to do better”.
The five-year plan marks a new phase in China’s climate policy, according to researchers at CIB Research, an economic research body affiliated with the Industrial Bank, whose largest shareholder is the Fujian provincial government.
Their analysis adds that the plan represents a broad effort to strengthen China’s climate-governance system, implementation mechanisms and underlying capacity.
Nevertheless, several headline targets and policies in the document simply reiterate already established plans.
These include:
- Cutting carbon intensity by 17% across the five years
- Reducing carbon intensity per product in industries under China’s carbon market by 3%
- Substituting fossil fuels with renewables
- Strengthening climate adaptation
- Supporting the “free flow” of cleantech
What does the plan say about non-CO2 GHGs?
The plan also goes into detail on China’s approach to non-CO2 GHGs. This includes reaffirming a target of an emissions “reduction capacity” from these gases totalling 30m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) by 2030, although the baseline is unclear.
The target previously appeared in the overarching five-year plan, as well as the plan for building a “Beautiful China”.
The goal refers to emissions reductions, which can be realised through implementing current non-CO2 emissions reduction policies and projects, says Chen Meian, programme director and senior analyst at the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress (iGDP).
She adds that it is “relatively achievable”, with sources including increasing the number of coal-mine methane utilisation projects.
She points to an MEE explanatory note for a draft methodology under the China Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) scheme, China’s voluntary carbon-credit market. Chen says the note suggests that projects using ventilation air methane and coal-mine methane with concentrations below 8% alone could deliver around 20MtCO2e of reduction by 2030.
The note states that, currently, such projects are estimated to be able to “generate annual emission reductions of approximately 4.5MtCO2e”.
In addition, Chen says, measures targeting industrial nitrous oxide (N2O) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) could help make up the remainder needed to meet the target.
According to iGDP analysis of biennial reports submitted by China to the UNFCCC, China emitted around 14,000MtCO2e of GHGs in 2021, excluding land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF).
Non-CO2 GHGs accounted for around 2,700MtCO2e, or 19%, of the total, the majority of which was methane, as shown in the figure below.
China’s plans to curb these super-pollutants in the five-year period include coal-mine methane utilisation projects, end-of-pipe destruction technologies for HFCs and guidance on the use of catalysts to reduce N2O emissions.
The plan also calls for the recovery and replacement of sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) in power equipment.
For Chen, the plan’s focus on SF6 control is particularly noteworthy. She says the gas is “finally receiving policy attention” and that proactive action is “timely and will help avoid future emissions growth” as China’s power system expands.
What does the plan say about global climate governance?
One of the plan’s clearest objectives for international cooperation is for China to play a more active role in global climate governance.
By 2030, it says China should markedly increase its “influence, guiding power, shaping power and moral appeal” in this area.
It says China’s climate action could also feed into the Global Governance Initiative, a policy initiative aimed at reforming the global governance system.
China will also aim to “build a new narrative on climate governance”, it adds.
Prof Thomas Hale, a professor in public policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, writes on LinkedIn that the plan “marks a major rhetorical shift” towards China being increasingly willing to “lead and shape” global climate action.
Another clear focal point for international cooperation is in carbon markets.
The plan calls for China to expand the global influence of its carbon market, such as through international rule-setting, cooperation on standards and by hosting the China Carbon Market Conference.
Qin says China’s more active role in global carbon pricing is already evident in the launch of the open coalition on compliance carbon markets with the EU and Brazil. This coalition is expected to adopt a work plan at the China Carbon Market Conference in September.
Qin also notes that China “could become the world’s largest [carbon] offset buyer” as its energy transition progresses.
The country would, therefore, “benefit from helping shape global rules under the Article 6 framework [for carbon trading under the Paris Agreement]”, she adds.
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The post Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change?
About a quarter of the countries signed up to the Paris Agreement are still breaching its rules by failing to submit a new national climate plan, 18 months after the February 2025 deadline.
Forty-five nations had not submitted a plan known as a nationally determined contribution (NDC), according to the Paris Agreement Implementation and Compliance Committee’s (PAICC) newly-published report of its 7-10 July 2026 meeting. One, Oman, has published it since the meeting.
Twelve countries ignored the committee’s repeated attempts to find out why they had not yet produced a climate plan, the report said. They will be invited to the committee’s next meeting, from September 1-4, so it can identify the challenges and constraints they face.
Members of the committee are divided, as they were at their last meeting, on whether to name those countries publicly and will debate the question again in September.
The PAICC does not have any power to punish governments, as building these powers into the Paris Agreement was thought to be so controversial that it could have stopped some governments from joining, experts have previously told Climate Home News.
A key requirement of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement is that governments publish a more ambitious NDC every five years, setting targets to reduce their planet-heating emissions and outlining their policies to adapt to climate change, in order to meet the accord’s goals on limiting global warming and protecting people from its effects.
The latest set – the third round of plans, with new targets for 2035 – was due in 2025.
Some medium-sized emitters
Countries without an updated NDC include Egypt, Vietnam, Argentina and the Phillippines, all of which rank among the world’s 40 largest greenhouse gas emitters. The rest of the countries are smaller, poorer nations, with many in Africa or the Caribbean.
Some nations have argued that they cannot put together an NDC – which requires a significant amount of work in tracking emissions and consulting on how to curb them across the economy – because of exceptional circumstances. For example, a letter from a Sudanese official to the PAICC committee, seen by Climate Home News, says that the country’s civil war has led to the suspension of its NDC preparation.
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The US and Iran are not signed up to the Paris Agreement, although the US submitted a 2035 NDC under the Biden administration before Donald Trump pulled the US out of the UN climate accords.
The committee also expressed concern that the UN’s NDC registry continued to label the climate plans of countries that are no longer party to the Paris Agreement as “active”, according to its report. The US submission has since been archived.
Since the last PAICC meeting in March, ten countries have published NDCs. The committee did not name them but they include India, Algeria, Cameroon and Guyana.
The post Quarter of countries still missing UN climate plans 18 months after deadline appeared first on Climate Home News.
Quarter of countries still missing UN climate plans 18 months after deadline
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