A global group of researchers found that countries intend to use 633 million hectares of total land area for carbon capture tactics such as tree planting, which would gobble up land desperately needed for food production and nature protection.
Only 551 million hectares accounted for in pledges would restore degraded lands and primary forests, which store carbon, regulate rainfall and local temperatures, shelter plants and animals as well as purify water and air.
In some cases the land belongs to indigenous people, whose land rights are found to be critical to reducing climate change due to their stewardship of forests.
“Land has a critical role to play in global efforts to keep the planet cool, but it’s not a silver bullet solution,” said Kate Dooley, the lead author of ‘The Land Gap Report’ and a researcher at the University of Melbourne.
“This study reveals that countries’ climate pledges are dangerously over-reliant on inequitable and unsustainable...