Climate Action in the Land Sector: Treading carefully

The Climate, Land, Ambition and Rights Alliance (CLARA) provides recommendations for land-use policies within the UNFCCC framework. The briefing emphasizes the need for free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) for indigenous peoples, the protection of collective land rights, and the adoption of agroecological practices. It strongly opposes the use of terrestrial carbon sinks to offset industrial emissions, citing the non-permanence of such sinks and the unreliability of soil carbon accounting. Additionally, it warns against large-scale bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and 'Climate Smart Agriculture' due to risks of land grabs and corporate green-washing.

• Terrestrial carbon sinks are unsuitable for offsetting fossil fuel emissions because they are non-permanent and vulnerable to releases, unlike the permanent reduction achieved by leaving fossil carbon in the ground.
• Accounting for carbon in agricultural soils is unreliable for meeting Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) targets due to high costs of monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) and the risk of carbon release triggered by drought or synthetic fertilisers.
• Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) is criticized as an unproven technology that could require between 500 million and 3 billion hectares of land, potentially triggering deforestation and land grabs in Southern countries.
• The briefing advocates for agroecological approaches to agricultural adaptation, noting that using compost, manure, and mulch instead of synthetic nitrogen fertilisers increases soil organic matter and water retention, improving resilience to drought.
• Securing collective and customary land rights for indigenous and forest-dependent communities is identified as a more effective and lower-cost forest protection strategy than large-scale afforestation projects.
• The 'Climate Smart Agriculture' framework is rejected as a vague term that allows industrial agribusiness corporations to re-brand harmful practices as 'green' without clear criteria or safeguards.
• Current accounting rules under the Kyoto Protocol contain 'LULUCF loopholes' by failing to register emissions from burning biomass in either the land or energy sectors.

APA

Anderson, T., Bossen, G., Dooley, K., Duyck, S., Fuhr, L., Gefsen, T., Gore, T., Kachi, A., Leonard, S., Lovera, S., Noiret, B., Perlman, K., Riggs, P., Sable, A.-L., Stone, K., Stoppel, J., Thies, C., Vettraino, J., & Zaumseil, E. (2017). Climate Action in the Land Sector: Treading carefully. Carbon Market Watch. https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CLARA_Action-in-the-land-sector_final.pdf

Chicago

Anderson, Teresa, Gry Bossen, Kate Dooley, Sébastien Duyck, Lili Fuhr, Torbjørn Gefsen, Tim Gore, et al. Climate Action in the Land Sector: Treading carefully. Carbon Market Watch, 2017. https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CLARA_Action-in-the-land-sector_final.pdf.

Wikipedia

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BibTeX

@techreport{anderson2017climate, author = {Anderson, Teresa and Bossen, Gry and Dooley, Kate and Duyck, Sébastien and Fuhr, Lili and Gefsen, Torbjørn and Gore, Tim and Kachi, Aki and Leonard, Stephen and Lovera, Simone and Noiret, Bertrand and Perlman, Kelsey and Riggs, Peter and Sable, Anne-Laure and Stone, Kelly and Stoppel, Jannes and Thies, Christoph and Vettraino, Jean and Zaumseil, Eike}, title = {{Climate Action in the Land Sector: Treading carefully}}, institution = {Carbon Market Watch}, year = {2017}, month = apr, url = {https://carbonmarketwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/CLARA_Action-in-the-land-sector_final.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }