The Climate Change Committee has published cutting-edge research led by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) that investigated options for sustainable land management to help meet national net zero targets, as well as the potential impacts.
Our work for the UK’s independent climate advisers will inform actions by land managers and policies by the UK Government and the Devolved administrations.
The first UKCEH-led report published on 21 May contains our modelling and analysis on how ambitious land-based mitigation actions could cut greenhouse gas emissions from UK land by 2050 while increasing timber and biomass fuel production. This findings were incorporated within the Climate Change Committee’s Seventh Carbon Budget, published in February, which presented a path to decarbonisation in the UK.
A separate UKCEH-led report carried out the first detailed examination of the environmental and economic impacts of greenhouse gas mitigation and climate change at landscape level across the UK.
Predicting impacts
Researchers modelled the multiple positive and negative impacts of a range of land-based measures to mitigate climate change by directly reducing greenhouse gases generated by land use/management or absorbing and storing carbon from the atmosphere.
Lead author Dr Amanda Thomson of UKCEH explained: “Our report sets out transparent pathways towards carbon-neutral land use in different agricultural landscapes across the UK that can be understood by policymakers and land managers. They can then make informed decisions that work and are viable in different areas.”
The report, involving UKCEH, Eunomia Consultancy, the University of East Anglia and Imperial College London, focused on 12 typical and distinctive agricultural landscapes that cover 55% of rural land area within the UK.
It investigated what actions to mitigate climate change are possible in different areas across the UK – such as restoring peatland, creating woodland and hedgerows and on-farm energy generation – and the resulting regional differences in emissions, ecosystem services and costs.
The report highlighted the benefits and trade-offs of action to mitigate climate change. For example, there could be additional benefits for biodiversity and water, soil and air quality, but in some locations taking land out of agricultural use to restore peatland or woodland would lead to loss of food production and net farm incomes. The report also describes how future climate change may affect these co-benefits and trade-offs.
Net emissions reductions
The research team modelled change to more sustainable land uses and compared the outcomes with those from a business-as-usual scenario. These land-use changes would reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of 23.8-28.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2e) by 2050 compared to business-as-usual. This is 45-53% of the target for net emissions reduction for the combined agriculture and land use sector estimated in the Seventh Carbon Budget.
The scientists anticipate that the other half of the target will be met by reductions in emissions through the take-up of low-carbon farming practices for soils and livestock, as well as mitigation actions on the remaining 45% of rural land area that is not already extensive woodland.
Economic modelling by Eunomia Consultancy highlighted the need for sufficient financial incentives to deliver the land use and management changes to maintain and enhance nature and the wider environment, as well as the potential importance of solar power generation as a revenue stream for landowners.