Land based interventions such as preventing deforestation and re-planting trees make up around 25% of countries promised action to tackle climate change. With worsening droughts and widespread fires, nature is under unprecedented strain. The countries highest in biodiversity are often those facing the biggest financial difficulties, compounded by the pressure to protect ecosystems that are globally significant. New research has found that financial difficulties, problematic accounting, and cascading impacts are putting this 25% of climate mitigation in peril, but why?
Land accounting maths doesn’t add up
In 2023 countries came together in Dubai for the UN Climate Summit COP28. They assessed how far off the world was from global emissions targets set for 2030, and identified where further action was needed. A set of measures were outlined that needed to happen in order to get back on track, called the Global Stocktake. For nature, it included an agreement that governments needed to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030.
This new research paper argues that for land, the Global Stocktake doesn’t go far enough. Academics highlight a disparity between how scientific models account for land based emissions, and how countries report upon them. Previous studies have shown this maths conundrum can lead to countries obscuring climate impacts and making climate progress look better than it is. If modeling and reporting methods were harmonised, it would reduce the carbon budget we have to get to net zero by 15 – 18%.
Giacomo Grassi, Bureau member of the IPCC task force on GHG inventories, said:
“ If Net Zero CO2 is the destination, which is needed to stabilise global temperatures, the scientific models are the navigation system we’re using to get there, and the car dashboard is what countries are using to check progress. A major problem that we already identified is that one is speaking in miles per hour, and the other in kilometers. We think we’re getting there faster than we are as a consequence.”
The money to deliver is missing
It’s not a new discovery that countries high in biodiversity are not getting the financial support they need from overseas to protect it, but academics cite this as a key reason 25% of climate mitigation is in jeopardy. Countries like the DRC, Indonesia and Ethiopia are highly dependent on financial and technical support from richer countries to meet pledges. Often the same countries under pressure to protect ecosystems that are of global significance are facing competing pressures to extract and exploit natural resources to pay back debts. This leads to expansion of destructive mining and large scale agriculture in areas previously pledged for land based climate mitigations. For example, studies have highlighted how IMF loans increased the annual rate of deforestation by 9% over a 20 year period.
Lands ability to store carbon is at risk
Wild fires are raging across much of the world, with Canada facing the second worst fires on record this year. A global red alert was issued earlier this year as swathes of Latin American forests burnt following some of the worst droughts on record. Natural carbon sinks in some regions, such as Europe, are under threat and need fast protective action. Meanwhile, this research has found that around 30% of the land based pledges made by countries are promises to create new land carbon sinks, despite difficulties protecting the ones we’ve got. Although it’s a positive to see countries committing to plant more trees, without drastic action to stop the decline of nature, it may be futile.
What needs to happen now?
-Richer governments need to deliver $200bn in nature finance by 2030, as committed to at the UN Biodiversity talks last year
-A reconciliation needs to happen between scientific models and government reporting methods on land
-The Global Stocktake will be re-visited at UN climate talks – COP30 – in Brazil this year, giving governments an opportunity to address the land gap
