Summary
This paper finds that repurposing portions of the United Kingdom’s (U.K.’s) agricultural land for carbon dioxide (CO2) removal will be effective and potentially essential in order for the region to meet its Paris Agreement emission reduction commitments and align with a 1.5º goal of warming. Using Earthstat and FAO data along with carbon content calculations to inform their assessment, the authors estimated the potential of combined pasture and feed cropland restoration, and just pasture land restoration, the former being found to extend the region’s permissible CO2 budget by 103%, and the latter up to 75%. The second scenario, although not a maximization of CO2 reduction, allows for some realistic tradeoffs that would permit future food sufficiency within the U K. A strength of the review is an examination of environmental, biodiversity and health co-benefits, for example, finding both scenarios to meet protein and calorie requirements for the entire population and increase healthy food consumption. A limitation of the review is the exclusion of potential impacts of global warming itself on future yield statistics used in the calculations of the study. The pathways being studied here both necessitate a shift from animal to plant-based food production in order to convert this agricultural land, implying a need for both production and consumption shifts on a large scale in order to utilize this as a valid climate mitigation resource.