On February 21, 2023, IATP and the Global Land Programme (GLP) hosted a webinar on what more realistic role for land to play in global climate mitigation could be. Watch a recording of the discussion above. 

Nations, companies, and other institutions are responding to the accelerating climate crisis challenge by making net-zero pledges. But the magnitude of the transformation required has led these net-zero pledges to rely heavily on carbon offsets. Offsets attempt to make good an emission in one place or sector with some kind of carbon (or carbon equivalent) capture elsewhere. Land-based carbon sequestration has become an increasingly common component of net-zero pledges. 

In this webinar, authors of The Land Gap Report joined the GLP and IATP to share their findings that countries’ climate pledges rely on unrealistic amounts of land-based carbon removal. The Land Gap Report, published in 2022, shows that if one tallies up all the land proposed for offsets in national climate plans, the total needed amounts to 1.2 billion hectares, which is equivalent to the total amount of land that is in cropland today. These offset commitments cannot be achieved without significant negative impacts on livelihoods, land rights, and ecosystems.