Negative Emissions Strategies in Land Management

Negative emissions strategies in land management encompass a suite of approaches designed to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in terrestrial ecosystems or engineered reservoirs. These strategies range from the enhancement of natural carbon sinks—through afforestation, reforestation and soil carbon sequestration—to the integration of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). They may also include emerging methods such as enhanced weathering of minerals and the deliberate alteration of land use to promote long-term carbon storage. Collectively, these options play a crucial role in overshoot pathways, wherein atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are first allowed to peak above target levels before being drawn down. Land management approaches must balance carbon removal potentials against impacts on food security, biodiversity and water resources. Practical implementation relies on informed policy frameworks, sustainable supply-chain practices and public acceptance, all of which shape the feasibility of large-scale deployment. Globally, negative emissions land strategies offer the prospect of climate risk reduction, yet they require coordinated governance to ensure that ecological integrity and social equity are maintained.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have underscored the imperative for preventive carbon removal capacities in overshoot scenarios, highlighting that reliance on rapid temperature reversal may be undermined by Earth-system feedbacks. Land-based removals are identified as indispensable to hedge against high-risk outcomes, although their sustainable scale remains uncertain. Meanwhile, assessments of public perceptions reveal that support for climate intervention technologies, including land-based carbon removal, varies markedly between regions. In many parts of the Global South, younger and more climate-vulnerable populations express greater favourability towards negative emissions, tempered by concerns that such technologies might divert attention from conventional mitigation. Foundational work has also clarified that land-use emissions critically influence the net efficiency of strategies such as afforestation and BECCS. The choice of biomass feedstock, the fate of existing ecosystems and the offset of fossil-fuel emissions determine whether land-based interventions yield a net carbon benefit or loss.

Negative Emissions Strategies in Land Management publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in negative emissions strategies in land management across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Negative emissions technologies (NETs): Methods or processes that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and durably store it in geological, terrestrial or ocean reservoirs.

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS): A process in which biomass is combusted for energy and the resulting CO₂ is captured and stored underground or in other long-term reservoirs.

Afforestation and reforestation: The establishment of new forests on land that has not recently been forested and the re-establishment of forests on lands that previously supported tree cover, respectively.

Direct air capture and storage (DACCS): An engineered technology that chemically removes CO₂ directly from ambient air and stores it in geological formations or through mineralisation.

Soil carbon sequestration: The process of increasing organic carbon stocks in soil through management practices such as no-till agriculture, cover cropping and organic amendments.

References

1. Overconfidence in climate overshoot. Nature (2024).
2. Public perceptions and support of climate intervention technologies across the Global North and Global South. Nature Communications (2024).
3. Negative emissions—Part 2: Costs, potentials and side effects. Environmental Research Letters (2018).
4. Land-use futures in the shared socio-economic pathways. Global Environmental Change (2017).
5. Negative emissions: Part 1—research landscape and synthesis. Environmental Research Letters (2018).
6. Land-use emissions play a critical role in land-based mitigation for Paris climate targets. Nature Communications (2018).
7. Investigating afforestation and bioenergy CCS as climate change mitigation strategies. Environmental Research Letters (2014).