Co-producing climate policy and negative emissions: trade-offs for sustainable land-use

Abstract

Under the Paris Agreement, nations have committed to preventing dangerous global warming. Scenarios for achieving net-zero emissions in the second half of this century depend on land (forests and bioenergy) to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Modelled levels of land-based mitigation could reduce the availability of productive agricultural land, and encroach on natural land, with potentially significant social and environmental consequences. However, these issues are poorly recognized in the policy-uptake of modelled outputs. Understanding how science and policy interact to produce expectations about mitigation pathways allows us to consider the trade-offs inherent in relying on land for mitigation.

Keywords

• food security
• land use
• modelling and simulation
• policies
• politics and governance