• COMMENT

EU climate plan sacrifices carbon storage and biodiversity for bioenergy

Incoming policies will cause the European Union to harvest more wood, shift one-fifth of cropland to bioenergy and outsource deforestation, analysis shows.
By
  1. Timothy Searchinger

    1. Timothy Searchinger is a senior research scholar at the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA; and technical director of the Food Program, World Resources Institute, Washington DC, USA.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  2. Oliver James

    1. Oliver James is a professional specialist at the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  3. Patrice Dumas

    1. Patrice Dumas is a senior researcher at the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), Paris, France.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  4. Thomas Kastner

    1. Thomas Kastner is a senior scientist at Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

  5. Stefan Wirsenius

    1. Stefan Wirsenius is associate professor in environmental and resource assessments of agriculture at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden.

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

Aerial view of burnings in the vicinity of the BR-163 highway in the state of Pará, northern Brazil.

Burnt land in Pará state, Brazil, where wide tracts of the Amazon rainforest have been cleared for soya-bean production. Credit: Gustavo Basso/NurPhoto via Getty

Access through your institution
Buy or subscribe

Nearly all strategies to meet climate targets or preserve global biodiversity require the world’s agricultural land area to be held at current levels or reduced. More precisely, the world must decrease its ‘land carbon footprint’, which is the quantity of carbon lost from native habitats to supply agricultural products and wood. But rising populations and incomes put the world on track to require 40–60% more crops and 70% more milk and meat in 2050 than in 20101. Even factoring in higher yields, models project that cropland will expand by 100 million to 400 million hectares (Mha) globally over this period1,2. Indeed, remote sensing of recent growth rates3 puts the world’s cropland on track to consume 450 million more hectares over this period, an area 1.5 times the size of India.

Access options

Access through your institution

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 612, 27-30 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-04133-1

References

  1. Searchinger, T., Waite, R., Hanson, C., Ranganathan, J. & Dumas, P. Creating a Sustainable Food Future (ed. Matthews, E.) (World Resources Institute, World Bank & United Nations, 2019).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Schmitz, C. et al. Agric. Econ. 45, 69–84 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Potapov, P. et al. Nature Food 3, 19–28 (2022).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Fuchs, R., Herold, M., Verburg, P. H. & Clevers, J. G. P. W. Biogeosciences 10, 1543–1559 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Springmann, M. et al. Nature 562, 519–525 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Fuchs, R., Brown, C. & Rounsevell, M. Nature 586, 671–673 (2020) .

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Pendrill, F. et al. Glob. Environ. Change 56, 1–10 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Searchinger, T. D., Wirsenius, S., Beringer, T. & Dumas, P. Nature 564, 249–253 (2018).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. European Commission. New EU Forest Strategy for 2030 (EC, 2021).

    Google Scholar 

  10. Searchinger, T. D., Beringer, T. & Strong, A. Energy Policy 110, 434–446 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Supplementary Information

  1. Supplementary data, methods and references

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing