Future land-use competition constrains natural climate solutions

Natural climate solutions (NCS) are an essential complement to climate mitigation and have been increasingly incorporated into international mitigation strategies. Yet, with the ongoing population growth, allocating natural areas for NCS may compete with other socioeconomic priorities, especially urban development and food security. Here, we projected the impacts of land-use competition incurred by cropland and urban expansion on the climate mitigation potential of NCS. We mapped the areas available for implementing 9 key NCS strategies and estimated their climate change mitigation potential. Then, we overlaid these areas with future cropland and urban expansion maps projected under three Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios (2020-2100) and calculated the resulting mitigation potential loss of each selected NCS strategy. Our results estimate a substantial reduction, 0.3-2.8 GtCO(2) yr(-1) or 4-39 %, in NCS mitigation potential, of which cropland expansion for fulfilling future food demand is the primary cause. This impact is particularly severe in the tropics where NCS hold the most abundant mitigation potential. Our findings highlight immediate actions prioritized to tropical areas are important to best realize NCS and are key to developing realistic and sustainable climate policies.

Automated summary

This study investigates the impact of land and urban expansion on the climate mitigation potential of natural climate solutions (NCS). The findings reveal that future cropland expansion, especially in tropical areas, has a significant negative effect on the NCS mitigation potential.