Hyderabad: An analysis of national climate plans released at the COP30 climate summit in Brazil warns that countries are failing to carry out the core work required to reduce emissions.
While they were required to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation, countries are instead pushing unrealistic carbon removal schemes, such as large-scale tree planting.
‘Protect existing forests as a realistic climate solution’
The Land Gap 2025 report, led by the University of Melbourne alongside a global consortium of experts, explains why countries are relying on impractical levels of land-based efforts to achieve net-zero emissions, rather than pursuing more realistic climate solutions that involve protecting existing forests and phasing out fossil fuels.
While forest advocates often link the lack of action to a lack of finance for forest protection, authors say the real impediment is a global system that pits economic development against preservation.
‘Economic burden pushing countries to exploit forests’
Lead author, University of Melbourne, Dr Kate Dooley, explained the new report outlines a series of reforms, many of which are already underway, that can resolve this fundamental conflict and align critical climate and biodiversity goals with economic goals.
“Why are so many countries ignoring forest protection as a key pillar of climate targets? The answer is that they live in a world where heavy sovereign debt burdens and industry-friendly tax and trade policies force many of them to exploit forests to keep their economies from crashing,” Dr Dooley said.
“Yet the bitter irony is that, over the long-term, healthy forests are essential to healthy economies due to the climate benefits, job opportunities and ecosystem services they provide,” she said.
Flaws in climate plans
The 2025 Land Gap covers climate pledges from all countries, with updates based on new submissions to the United Nations’ climate secretariat leading up to COP30 (as of October 31), including climate plans known as ‘nationally determined contributions,’ or NDCs and long-term strategies for 2050.
The report identified two essential flaws in national climate plans submitted for COP30.
1. A ‘land gap’ between governments’ reliance on land to achieve their carbon mitigation goals and what is achievable.
2. A ‘forest gap’ between global commitments to halt deforestation and forest degradation by 2030 and the likely outcomes of country pledges.
Large-scale tree planting would put marginalised groups at risk
The report focuses on country pledges to use land-based carbon removal initiatives, such as large-scale tree planting, forest restoration and bioenergy capture and storage projects to meet obligations under the 2015 Paris Agreement.
It warns that the land required to achieve such levels of carbon removal would put lands critical to marginalised groups at risk, like indigenous peoples, local communities and smallholder farmers. The annual rate of deforestation globally would still be four million hectares in 2030, with another 16 million hectares of forests being degraded – a forest gap of 20 million hectares.
Few include reversing deforestation and degradation in climate plans
Dr Dooley said it was hugely disappointing to see that less than 40 per cent of parties to the Paris Agreement submitted a new climate plan and that pledges for reducing emissions through halting and reversing deforestation and degradation were limited in national plans.
“This reflects that countries have not been ambitious enough in their pledges to meet the Paris Agreement of a 1.5 °C warming threshold and are now relying on land-based carbon removals, which may take decades to materialise,” Dr Dooley explained.
Rise in global temperature between 1.8°C– 2.0°C
The researchers found that countries would have to devote just over one billion hectares of land – an area larger than the size of Australia – to carbon removal to achieve their targets. This represents a slight increase compared to the Land Gap 2022 report.
Co-author and Senior Research Analyst at Climate Resource, Dr Alister Self, said based on current assessments, best estimates of future rises in global temperature are between 1.8°C– 2.0°C above pre-industrial levels.
“This is only if countries meet their emissions targets on time and in full, and do not backslide further on current policy commitments, in which case these estimates would rise further,” Dr Self said.
