Land Gap Report 2025

Land Gap Report 2025 highlights the growing dependence on land for climate mitigation. Land-based carbon removal (LBCR) is heavily relied on for carbon capture. Read here to learn more.

The Land Gap Report 2025 warns that global climate strategies are becoming increasingly dependent on Land-Based Carbon Removal (LBCR), often in unrealistic ways that risk creating a massive mismatch between available land and expected climate benefits.

According to the report, current government climate pledges require around 1.01 billion hectares (ha) of land for LBCR, an area roughly the size of the United States.

This unprecedented land requirement exposes what the report calls the “Land Gap”, a drastic overestimation of how much land can be diverted for carbon removal without harming food security, ecosystems, and local communities.

What is Land-Based Carbon Removal (LBCR)?

LBCR includes methods that use forests, soils, wetlands, peatlands, and agricultural landscapes to capture and store carbon dioxide.

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These nature-based and hybrid approaches are central to many national climate plans under the Paris Agreement.

Major LBCR Strategies

1. Reforestation and Afforestation

• Among the most widely proposed carbon removal strategies.
• The IPCC estimates that these methods can remove 0.5-10.1 gigatonnes of CO₂ annually.
• However, large-scale plantations may compete with food crops and biodiversity-rich landscapes.

2. Soil Carbon Sequestration

• Enhances the carbon stored in soils through:
  • No-till farming
  • Cover cropping
  • Organic amendments
• Improves soil fertility and climate resilience, but gains can be reversed by droughts or erosion.

3. Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS)

• Involves growing energy crops like silvergrass, burning them for energy, and capturing the emissions for underground storage.
• Highly land- and water-intensive.
• Large-scale BECCS can displace communities and create monoculture landscapes.

4. Geologic Carbon Sequestration

• Injecting captured CO₂ into porous rock formations for long-term storage.
• Requires robust monitoring and regulation to prevent leakage.

5. Biochar

• Biomass is burned under low oxygen to create a stable form of carbon.
• When applied to soils, it enhances soil health and locks carbon for centuries.

6. Enhanced Weathering

• Spreading finely crushed reactive minerals (like olivine) to accelerate natural CO₂ absorption.
• Promising but technologically and logistically challenging.

Key Highlights from the Land Gap Report 2025

Gigantic Land Requirements

Governments’ climate pledges rely on 1.01 billion ha of land for carbon removal, far beyond what is realistically available.

This would:

• Exceed global agricultural land capacity in many regions
• Trigger competition between food production and carbon removal
• Undermine global food security

The report stresses that carbon removal should complement emissions reduction, not replace it.

Social and Ecological Risks

Converting land at such a massive scale leads to:

• Displacement of Indigenous peoples and local communities
• Loss of biodiversity-rich ecosystems
• Expansion of monoculture forests and energy crop plantations
• Increased water stress in already vulnerable landscapes

Many LBCR plans risk replicating “green colonialism,” where communities bear the burdens of climate solutions without receiving benefits.

The Forest Gap

The report highlights a second crisis: the gap between global commitments and actual actions on forests.

Countries have pledged to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030, yet current trends show a loss or degradation of around 20 million hectares per year by 2030.

This “Forest Gap” undermines:

• Global carbon sinks
• Biodiversity conservation
• Indigenous rights
• Climate resilience

Why the Land Gap Matters

The core message of the report is clear:

Countries are assuming vast, unrealistic land availability to offset emissions instead of reducing fossil fuel use.

Heavy reliance on LBCR can create:

• False climate optimism, allowing continued fossil fuel dependence
• Land conflicts in developing countries
• Ecological degradation from industrial-scale plantations
• Serious food security implications, particularly in the Global South

In short, land is not an infinite resource. Climate strategies must account for competing needs- food, livelihoods, biodiversity, and carbon removal.

Recommendations from the Report

The Land Gap Report 2025 urges countries to:

1. Prioritise Emission Reductions: Reduce emissions at the source instead of planning to offset them through land.
2. Protect and Restore Natural Ecosystems: Natural forests, peatlands, and mangroves offer-

• High carbon sequestration
• Biodiversity protection
• Minimal social disruption

3. Avoid Large-Scale Monoculture Plantations: They provide limited carbon benefits and harm biodiversity and water resources.
4. Recognise Indigenous Land Rights: Indigenous-managed lands have some of the highest carbon storage and lowest deforestation rates.
5. Guide LBCR with Social and Ecological Safeguards: Ensure any carbon removal project respects-

• Community rights
• Food production needs
• Ecological integrity

Conclusion

The Land Gap Report 2025 is a powerful reminder that climate solutions cannot rely excessively on land-based approaches. While LBCR is essential, the proposed use of over 1 billion hectares is both unrealistic and potentially dangerous.

The world must focus on deep emissions cuts, ecosystem protection, and fair, sustainable carbon removal strategies that do not compromise the rights of vulnerable communities or global food security.