Land use, land-use change, and forestry
Land use, land-use change, and forestry, also referred to as forestry and other land use or agriculture, forestry and other land use ''', is defined as a "greenhouse gas inventory sector that covers emissions and removals of greenhouse gases resulting from direct human-induced land use such as settlements and commercial uses, land-use change, and forestry activities."
LULUCF has impacts on the global carbon cycle and as such, these activities can add or remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, influencing climate. LULUCF has been the subject of two major reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but is difficult to measure. Additionally, land use is of critical importance for biodiversity.
Development
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Article 4 requires all Parties to "develop, periodically update, publish and make available to the Conference of the Parties" as well as "national inventories of anthropogenic emissions by sources" "removals by sinks of all greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol."Under the UNFCCC reporting guidelines, human-induced greenhouse emissions must be reported in six sectors: energy ; industrial processes; solvent and other product use; agriculture; waste; and land use, land use change and forestry.
The rules governing accounting and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions from LULUCF under the Kyoto Protocol are contained in several decisions of the Conference of Parties under the UNFCCC.
LULUCF has been the subject of two major reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The Kyoto Protocol article 3.3 thus requires mandatory LULUCF accounting for afforestation, reforestation and deforestation, as well as under article 3.4 voluntary accounting for cropland management, grazing land management, revegetation and forest management.
This decision sets out the rules that govern how Kyoto Parties with emission reduction commitments account for changes in carbon stocks in land use, land-use change and forestry. It is mandatory for Annex 1 Parties to account for changes in carbons stocks resulting from deforestation, reforestation and afforestation and voluntary to account for emissions from forest management, cropland management, grazing land management and revegetation.
The flexibility mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol, including the Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation, also include provisions for LULUCF projects, further enhancing the integration of land use considerations into climate change mitigation strategies.
Climate impacts
Land-use change can be a factor in CO2 atmospheric concentration, and is thus a contributor to global climate change. IPCC estimates that land-use change contributes a net 1.6 ± 0.8 Gt carbon per year to the atmosphere. For comparison, the major source of CO2, namely emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production, amount to 6.3 ± 0.6 Gt carbon per year.In 2021 the Global Carbon Project estimated annual land-use change emissions were 4.1 ± 2.6 Gt for 2011–2020.
Updated assessments report that emissions from land-use, land-use change and forestry averaged 1.1 ± 0.7 Gt C yr⁻¹ over 2014–2023 and a preliminary projection of 1.2 ± 0.7 Gt C yr⁻¹ for 2024
The land-use sector is critical to achieving the aim of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to.
Land-use change alters not just atmospheric CO2 concentration but also land surface biophysics such as albedo and evapotranspiration, both of which affect climate. The impact of land-use change on the climate is also more and more recognized by the climate modeling community. On regional or local scales, the impact of LUC can be assessed by Regional climate models. This is however difficult, particularly for variables, which are inherently noisy, such as precipitation. For this reason, it is suggested to conduct RCM ensemble simulations.