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Improving land-use emission estimates under the Paris Agreement

Climate science and national emissions reporting communities have historically used different definitions and methods for anthropogenic land-based carbon removals. As the mitigation agenda accelerates, reconciling these differences for comparability and moving towards integration is crucial for enhancing confidence in land-use emission estimates.

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Fig. 1: Mismatch in anthropogenic land CO2 emissions and removals.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all participants at the IPCC Expert Meeting on Reconciling Anthropogenic Land Use Emissions, held in Ispra (Italy) on 9–11 July 2024. Special thanks go to the co-chairs of the IPCC Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (T. Enoki and M. Hayat) and its technical support unit, as well as the steering committee, co-chairs/rapporteurs and presenters, including L. Aragão, G. Balsamo, R. Boer, R. Cantinho, P. Ciais, J. Fuglestvedt, T. Gasser, O. Geden, G. Hansen, J. House, M. Howden, A. Korosuo, G. Itsoua Madzous, D. MacDonald, G. Maenhout, J. Melo, R. Matthews, D. Nemitz, S. Ogle, J. P. Ometto, L. Panichelli, J. Portugal-Pereira, A. Reisinger, K. Riahi, A. Romanowskaya, Y. Rojas, R. Roman-Cuesta, S. Rossi, M. Rupakheti, S. Saatchi, M. Sandker, S. Seneviratne and R. Sukumar. The full list of participants is available in the Expert Meeting’s report (https://go.nature.com/3Gbjn70). M.J.G. performed this research before joining PNNL and UMD. The views expressed are purely those of the writers and may not under any circumstances be regarded as stating an official position of the European Commission or any other institution.

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G.G. led the draft of the Comment, with the help of G.P.P. and J.G.C. All authors contributed to subsequent edits and the preparation of the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Giacomo Grassi.

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Nature Sustainability thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Grassi, G., Peters, G.P., Canadell, J.G. et al. Improving land-use emission estimates under the Paris Agreement. Nat Sustain 8, 579–581 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01565-1

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