About | LULUCF.IS

Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry

LULUCF covers human activities that affect how greenhouse gases are emitted and sequestered in relation to land use and changes in land use (IPCC, 2000). It deals with two things: how land is currently used, and what happens when one type of land use replaces another.

Land use and land-use change are the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Iceland. Disturbed wetlands, soil erosion, and the exploitation of diverse ecosystems carry most of the weight. Globally, the IPCC estimated that agriculture and land use accounted for around 23% of total greenhouse gas emissions between 2007 and 2016 (IPCC, 2019). The other side of the ledger is sequestration. Wetland restoration and soil conservation can halt emissions and lock away significant amounts of carbon. Over the same period, natural carbon sinks absorbed roughly 29% of annual CO2 emissions from land use and land-use change (IPCC, 2019).

GIS in LULUCF work

Geographic information systems are central to how LULUCF research, monitoring, and policy work gets done in practice (Longley o.fl., 2015). Without GIS, most of what follows would not be possible.

Mapping and classifying land use is the starting point. It is the foundation for any assessment of carbon emissions and sequestration (Verburg o.fl., 2011). From there, comparing datasets over time makes it possible to track changes: disturbed or restored wetlands, shifts in vegetation, urban expansion, changes in rivers and glaciers, and forest cover (Hansen o.fl., 2013). This monitoring function is not optional. It is a prerequisite for any credible GHG assessment.

GIS also brings together different data sources, combining soil type, vegetation, and climate data to estimate carbon stocks across ecosystems (Hengl o.fl., 2017). It supports the development of models that project future land-use change and its effects on carbon balance (Hurtt o.fl., 2011). In policy terms, the maps and analyses that GIS produces feed directly into climate policy decisions and help prioritize where action is most needed (Bateman o.fl., 2013).

Remote sensing is another area where GIS is indispensable. Processing and interpreting satellite imagery at scale requires GIS infrastructure, and for large land areas there is no practical alternative (Gorelick o.fl., 2017). The same applies to climate modelling, where land-use data needs to be integrated with broader climate models to improve projections of future change (Lawrence o.fl., 2016).

Looking ahead, the role of GIS in LULUCF work is likely to grow. Advances in remote sensing and artificial intelligence are producing more accurate and more frequent data, which in turn improves our understanding of the carbon cycle and our ability to design effective responses to climate change (Herold o.fl., 2019).

Some references

Bateman, I. J., Harwood, A. R., Mace, G. M., Watson, R. T., Abson, D. J., Andrews, B., Binner, A., Crowe, A., Day, B. H., Dugdale, S., Fezzi, C., Foden, J., Hadley, D., Haines-Young, R., Hulme, M., Kontoleon, A., Lovett, A. A., Munday, P., Pascual, U., … Turner, R. K. (2013). Bringing ecosystem services into economic decision-making: Land use in the United Kingdom. Science, 341(6141), 45–50.

Gorelick, N., Hancher, M., Dixon, M., Ilyushchenko, S., Thau, D., & Moore, R. (2017). Google Earth Engine: Planetary-scale geospatial analysis for everyone. Remote Sensing of Environment, 202, 18–27.

Hansen, M. C., Potapov, P. V., Moore, R., Hancher, M., Turubanova, S. A., Tyukavina, A., Thau, D., Stehman, S. V., Goetz, S. J., Loveland, T. R., Kommareddy, A., Egorov, A., Chini, L., Justice, C. O., & Townshend, J. R. G. (2013). High-resolution global maps of 21st-century forest cover change. Science, 342(6160), 850–853.

Hengl, T., Mendes de Jesus, J., Heuvelink, G. B. M., Ruiperez Gonzalez, M., Kilibarda, M., Blagotić, A., Shangguan, W., Wright, M. N., Geng, X., Bauer-Marschallinger, B., Guevara, M. A., Vargas, R., MacMillan, R. A., Batjes, N. H., Leenaars, J. G. B., Ribeiro, E., Wheeler, I., Mantel, S., & Kempen, B. (2017). SoilGrids250m: Global gridded soil information based on machine learning. PLoS ONE, 12(2), e0169748.

Hurtt, G. C., Chini, L. P., Frolking, S., Betts, R. A., Feddema, J., Fischer, G., Fisk, J. P., Hibbard, K., Houghton, R. A., Janetos, A., Jones, C. D., Kindermann, G., Kinoshita, T., Klein Goldewijk, K., Riahi, K., Shevliakova, E., Smith, S., Stehfest, E., Thomson, A., … Wang, Y. P. (2011). Harmonization of land-use scenarios for the period 1500–2100: 600 years of global gridded annual land-use transitions, wood harvest, and resulting secondary lands. Climatic Change, 109(1), 117–161.

IPCC. (2000). Land use, land-use change, and forestry. Cambridge University Press.

IPCC. (2019). Climate change and land: An IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems. Cambridge University Press.

Lawrence, D. M., Hurtt, G. C., Arneth, A., Brovkin, V., Calvin, K. V., Jones, A. D., Jones, C. D., Lawrence, P. J., de Noblet-Ducoudré, N., Poulter, B., Riahi, K., & Shevliakova, E. (2016). The Land Use Model Intercomparison Project (LUMIP) contribution to CMIP6: Rationale and experimental design. Geoscientific Model Development, 9(9), 2973–2998.

Longley, P. A., Goodchild, M. F., Maguire, D. J., & Rhind, D. W. (2015). Geographic information science and systems. John Wiley & Sons.

Verburg, P. H., Neumann, K., & Nol, L. (2011). Challenges in using land use and land cover data for global change studies. Global Change Biology, 17(2), 974–989.

The Beginning and Establishment of UNFCCC

International awareness of climate change grew considerably through the 1980s. In 1988, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme jointly established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to assess the scientific evidence on climate change (Bodansky, 2001). When the IPCC published its first assessment report in 1990, negotiations began on a framework convention. Those negotiations produced the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and in force from March 21, 1994 (United Nations, 1992). The stated objective was to prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system (United Nations, 1992, Article 2).

Membership in UNFCCC

Membership has grown steadily since 1992. As of 2023, 198 parties have joined the convention, including 197 countries and the European Union (UNFCCC, 2023). That near-universal participation says something about how the convention is regarded internationally, whatever one thinks of how well it has been implemented.

IPCC and Its Role

The IPCC was established four years before the UNFCCC, in 1988. Its job is to regularly assess scientific, technical, and socioeconomic knowledge related to climate change (IPCC, n.d.). It does not conduct original research. It reviews what already exists and draws conclusions from it (IPCC, 2013). Assessment reports come out roughly every five to seven years, alongside special reports and technical papers, and they form the scientific basis for international climate negotiations (Agrawala, 1998).

LULUCF: Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry

LULUCF covers human activities that affect greenhouse gas emissions and sequestration through land use, land-use change, and forestry (IPCC, 2000). It has three main components: how land is currently used, whether for agriculture, forestry, or urban development; what happens when land shifts from one use to another; and forestry activities including afforestation, reforestation, and forest management (FAO, 2020).

The sector matters for two reasons. On the emissions side, land-use change, especially deforestation, is a major source of greenhouse gases. The IPCC estimated that agriculture, forestry, and other land use accounted for around 23% of total anthropogenic emissions between 2007 and 2016 (IPCC, 2019). On the sequestration side, forests and soils absorb a significant share of what we emit. Over the same period, natural land systems sequestered roughly 29% of annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions (IPCC, 2019).

The Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997 and entered into force in 2005, becoming the first legally binding international agreement to set emission reduction targets (UNFCCC, n.d.). It applied binding targets to industrialized countries, rested on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, and introduced flexible mechanisms including international emissions trading (Grubb o.fl., 1999). LULUCF appeared formally in climate policy for the first time under the Kyoto Protocol, with specific rules governing how countries could account for emissions and removals from the sector in meeting their targets (Schlamadinger o.fl., 2007).

The Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015 and in force from 2016, is generally treated as the successor to the Kyoto Protocol and a shift in how international climate policy works (UNFCCC, 2015). The central temperature goal is to keep warming well below 2°C and preferably below 1.5°C. All countries, not just industrialized ones, commit to submitting and regularly updating nationally determined contributions. The agreement also emphasizes adaptation and climate finance for developing countries (Falkner, 2016). LULUCF carries more weight under Paris than it did under Kyoto. The agreement explicitly encourages countries to protect and enhance natural sinks and reservoirs, forests included, as part of their climate commitments (Grassi o.fl., 2017).

The Difference between the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement

The two agreements differ in several meaningful ways. The Kyoto Protocol applied binding targets to industrialized countries only; the Paris Agreement brings every country in (Bodansky, 2016). The Kyoto approach was top-down, with targets set externally; Paris relies on voluntary commitments that countries define themselves (Keohane og Oppenheimer, 2016). That makes Paris more flexible but also harder to enforce (Rajamani, 2016). It also sets longer-term goals, including temperature limits and an implicit push toward carbon neutrality (Rogelj o.fl., 2016). On LULUCF specifically, both agreements recognize the sector, but Paris goes further in encouraging countries to treat natural carbon sinks as active components of their climate strategies (Grassi o.fl., 2018).

The Evolution of LULUCF in International Climate Policy

The role of LULUCF in international climate policy has changed substantially since 1992. The original UNFCCC text acknowledged the importance of forests and ecosystems in climate mitigation (United Nations, 1992, Article 4). The Kyoto Protocol turned that acknowledgment into formal accounting rules (Schlamadinger o.fl., 2007). The development of REDD+, the mechanism for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, added another layer by creating incentives for forest protection in developing countries (UN-REDD Programme, 2015). Under the Paris Agreement, countries are actively encouraged to include LULUCF in their national contributions and to take concrete steps to conserve and enhance sinks (Grassi o.fl., 2017).

Challenges and Opportunities in LULUCF

The sector is not straightforward to manage. Measuring emissions and removals from land use is technically difficult because ecosystems are dynamic and do not sit still while you count them (Romijn o.fl., 2015). Carbon stored in vegetation and soil can be released again through natural disturbances or human activity, raising questions about permanence (Kurz o.fl., 2008). Reducing emissions in one place can shift pressure elsewhere, a problem known as leakage (Meyfroidt o.fl., 2010). And land has to serve multiple purposes simultaneously: climate mitigation, food production, and biodiversity conservation do not always point in the same direction (Smith o.fl., 2010).

The opportunities are real nonetheless. Many LULUCF activities are cost-effective compared to mitigation options in other sectors (Griscom o.fl., 2017). They tend to come with co-benefits: biodiversity, water quality, and support for local communities alongside the carbon outcomes (Fargione o.fl., 2018). Natural climate solutions, of which LULUCF is a core component, could provide up to 37% of the cost-effective CO2 mitigation needed by 2030 to stay below 2°C (Griscom o.fl., 2017).

Future Prospects for LULUCF in Climate Policy

As countries move toward implementing the Paris Agreement and pursuing net-zero targets, LULUCF will matter more, not less. Nature-based solutions are receiving growing attention, and most of them fall under the LULUCF umbrella (Seddon o.fl., 2020). Satellite technology and data processing are improving the ability to monitor land-use change at both global and local scales (Gorelick o.fl., 2017). There is increasing interest in integrated strategies that treat LULUCF alongside energy and agriculture rather than as a separate accounting exercise (IPCC, 2019). And as hard-to-abate emissions remain in sectors like industry and aviation, the sequestration potential of land will be essential for any country serious about reaching net zero (Rockström o.fl., 2017).

LULUCF has moved from a footnote in the original UNFCCC text to a central element of how countries think about their climate commitments. That shift reflects a clearer understanding of what land does in the carbon cycle, and of how much we stand to lose if we manage it badly.

Some references

Agrawala, S. (1998). Context and early origins of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climatic Change, 39(4), 605–620.

Bodansky, D. (2001). The history of the global climate change regime. Í U. Luterbacher og D. F. Sprinz (Ritstj.), International relations and global climate change (bls. 23–40). MIT Press.

Bodansky, D. (2016). The Paris Climate Change Agreement: A new hope? American Journal of International Law, 110(2), 288–319.

Falkner, R. (2016). The Paris Agreement and the new logic of international climate politics. International Affairs, 92(5), 1107–1125.

FAO. (2020). Global forest resources assessment 2020. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Fargione, J. E., Bassett, S., Boucher, T., Bridgham, S. D., Conant, R. T., Cook-Patton, S. C., Ellis, P. W., Falcucci, A., Fourqurean, J. W., Gopalakrishna, T., Gu, H., Henderson, B., Hurteau, M. D., Kroeger, K. D., Kroeger, T., Lark, T. J., Leavitt, S. M., Lomax, G., McDonald, R. I., … Griscom, B. W. (2018). Natural climate solutions for the United States. Science Advances, 4(11), eaat1869.

Gorelick, N., Hancher, M., Dixon, M., Ilyushchenko, S., Thau, D., og Moore, R. (2017). Google Earth Engine: Planetary-scale geospatial analysis for everyone. Remote Sensing of Environment, 202, 18–27.

Grassi, G., House, J., Dentener, F., Federici, S., den Elzen, M., og Penman, J. (2017). The key role of forests in meeting climate targets requires science for credible mitigation. Nature Climate Change, 7(3), 220–226.

Grassi, G., House, J., Kurz, W. A., Cescatti, A., Houghton, R. A., Peters, G. P., Sanz, M. J., Viñas, R. A., Alkama, R., Arneth, A., Bondeau, A., Dentener, F., Fader, M., Federici, S., Friedlingstein, P., Jain, A. K., Kato, E., Koven, C. D., Lee, D., … Federici, S. (2018). Reconciling global-model estimates and country reporting of anthropogenic forest CO2 sinks. Nature Climate Change, 8(10), 914–920.

Griscom, B. W., Adams, J., Ellis, P. W., Houghton, R. A., Lomax, G., Miteva, D. A., Schlesinger, W. H., Shoch, D., Siikamäki, J. V., Smith, P., Woodbury, P., Zganjar, C., Blackman, A., Campari, J., Conant, R. T., Delgado, C., Elias, P., Gopalakrishna, T., Hamsik, M. R., … Fargione, J. (2017). Natural climate solutions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(44), 11645–11650.

Grubb, M., Vrolijk, C., og Brack, D. (1999). The Kyoto Protocol: A guide and assessment. Royal Institute of International Affairs.

IPCC. (n.d.). About the IPCC. https://www.ipcc.ch/about/

IPCC. (2000). Land use, land-use change, and forestry. Cambridge University Press.

IPCC. (2013). Principles governing IPCC work. https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/09/ipcc-principles.pdf

Keohane, R. O., og Oppenheimer, M. (2016). Paris: Beyond the climate dead end through pledge and review? Politics and Governance, 4(3), 142–151.

Kurz, W. A., Stinson, G., Rampley, G. J., Dymond, C. C., og Neilson, E. T. (2008). Risk of natural disturbances makes future contribution of Canada’s forests to the global carbon cycle highly uncertain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(5), 1551–1555.

Meyfroidt, P., Rudel, T. K., og Lambin, E. F. (2010). Forest transitions, trade, and the global displacement of land use. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(49), 20917–20922.

Rajamani, L. (2016). Ambition and differentiation in the 2015 Paris Agreement: Interpretative possibilities and underlying politics. International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 65(2), 493–514.

Rockström, J., Gaffney, O., Rogelj, J., Meinshausen, M., Nakicenovic, N., og Schellnhuber, H. J. (2017). A roadmap for rapid decarbonization. Science, 355(6331), 1269–1271.

Rogelj, J., den Elzen, M., Höhne, N., Fransen, T., Fekete, H., Winkler, H., Schaeffer, R., Sha, F., Riahi, K., og Meinshausen, M. (2016). Paris Agreement climate proposals need a boost to keep warming well below 2°C. Nature, 534(7609), 631–639.

Romijn, E., Lantican, C. B., Herold, M., Lindquist, E., Ochieng, R., Wijaya, A., Murdiyarso, D., og Verchot, L. (2015). Assessing change in national forest monitoring capacities of 99 tropical countries. Forest Ecology and Management, 352, 109–123.

Schlamadinger, B., Bird, N., Johns, T., Brown, S., Canadell, J., Ciccarese, L., Dutschke, M., Fiedler, J., Fischlin, A., Fearnside, P., Forner, C., Freibauer, A., Frumhoff, P., Hoehne, N., Kirschbaum, M. U. F., Labat, A., Marland, G., Michaelowa, A., Montanarella, L., … Zahabu, E. (2007). A synopsis of land use, land-use change and forestry under the Kyoto Protocol and Marrakech Accords. Environmental Science and Policy, 10(4), 271–282.

Seddon, N., Chausson, A., Berry, P., Girardin, C. A. J., Smith, A., og Turner, B. (2020). Understanding the value and limits of nature-based solutions to climate change and other global challenges. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 375(1794), 20190120.

UNFCCC. (n.d.). History of the convention. https://unfccc.int/process/the-convention/history-of-the-convention

UNFCCC. (n.d.). What is the Kyoto Protocol? https://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol

UNFCCC. (2015). Paris Agreement. https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement

UNFCCC. (2023). Status of ratification of the convention. https://unfccc.int/process/the-convention/status-of-ratification

UN-REDD Programme. (2015). UN-REDD Programme strategic framework 2016–2020. United Nations.

United Nations. (1992). United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. United Nations.