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EU climate plan sacrifices carbon storage and biodiversity for bioenergy

Incoming policies will cause the European Union to harvest more wood, shift one-fifth of cropland to bioenergy and outsource deforestation, analysis shows.
By
  1. Timothy Searchinger

    1. Timothy Searchinger is a senior research scholar at the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA; and technical director of the Food Program, World Resources Institute, Washington DC, USA.

  2. Oliver James

    1. Oliver James is a professional specialist at the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA.

  3. Patrice Dumas

    1. Patrice Dumas is a senior researcher at the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), Paris, France.

  4. Thomas Kastner

    1. Thomas Kastner is a senior scientist at Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

  5. Stefan Wirsenius

    1. Stefan Wirsenius is associate professor in environmental and resource assessments of agriculture at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden.

Aerial view of burnings in the vicinity of the BR-163 highway in the state of Pará, northern Brazil.

Burnt land in Pará state, Brazil, where wide tracts of the Amazon rainforest have been cleared for soya-bean production. Credit: Gustavo Basso/NurPhoto via Getty

Nearly all strategies to meet climate targets or preserve global biodiversity require the world’s agricultural land area to be held at current levels or reduced. More precisely, the world must decrease its ‘land carbon footprint’, which is the quantity of carbon lost from native habitats to supply agricultural products and wood. But rising populations and incomes put the world on track to require 40–60% more crops and 70% more milk and meat in 2050 than in 20101. Even factoring in higher yields, models project that cropland will expand by 100 million to 400 million hectares (Mha) globally over this period1,2. Indeed, remote sensing of recent growth rates3 puts the world’s cropland on track to consume 450 million more hectares over this period, an area 1.5 times the size of India.

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Nature 612, 27-30 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-04133-1

References

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Supplementary Information

  1. Supplementary data, methods and references

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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