Highlights:

Pressures around land use are emerging as one of the defining environmental challenges of modern times. Competition for productive and ecologically valuable land, and for the resources and services it provides, is set to intensify over the coming decades, as growing demand for land for farming, climate change mitigation and other essential uses contributes to a deepening ‘land crunch’. This report examines the drivers of, and potential solutions to, this emerging crisis. It explores the nature of ‘land wealth’, recognizing that globally important resources are unevenly distributed between nations. Inequalities and tensions will increase if competition between land uses, and land users, is not addressed by policies that acknowledge national constraints without surrendering the ambition to reduce global resource use. Tackling the land crunch is thus an intrinsically global and political problem, dependent on international cooperation. Ultimately, creating a sustainable, ‘land-wealthy world’ will require transformational changes to land use and its governance. This means reducing humanity’s land footprint, governing global land resources systemically and cooperatively, and changing how land is valued and its stewardship financed. Perhaps most fundamentally, governments must make land an urgent priority, and put in place institutional changes that embed land crunch planning at the centre of domestic, foreign and economic policy. 

Focus on food systems

Chapter 4 of the report focuses on “Land and agri-food pressures”.

As agriculture is by far the largest land use, and food systems are central to rising pressures on land, efforts to promote transformation throughout food systems need to be redoubled to reduce those pressures and achieve better planetary health outcomes. Crucially, this will include shifting from animal- to more plant-based diets, and reducing supply-chain food losses and consumer waste. These ideas have long been acknowledged as essential elements for sustainability, but have yet to translate into the meaningful policy changes that would drive widespread commercial and consumer adoption. However, their potential to significantly reduce land use means they simply cannot be ignored and must become a priority. Compared with producing animal-sourced foods, production of plant-based foods requires much less land and emits far fewer greenhouse gases, meaning less land is also required to sequester food system emissions. Such a shift would also free up land for other uses, meaning for example that land-wealthy countries could restore native ecosystems – in line with meeting biodiversity goals – without having to compromise food and nutrition security to do so. 

Though less of a factor than dietary change, reducing the amounts of food lost in production and transit, or wasted by consumers, is also important for shrinking the land-use footprint of food production. Typical industry responses are often confined to boosting supply-chain efficiencies and developing highly processed ‘shelf-stable’ foods that keep for long periods. While it is important that produce reaches consumers in good condition, changes must also include promoting regenerative and resilient agriculture to counter the negative environmental impacts associated with many current industrialized food supply chains. 

As noted, however, for change to be achieved at the scale needed, food systems need to attract much greater international political attention. Just as biodiversity protection had its ‘Paris moment’ at the COP15 summit of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2022, food system transformation needs a similar galvanizing moment in international relations. In this regard, the upcoming COP28 climate summit scheduled for November/December 2023 could provide an early opportunity to advance transformative action as part of the summit’s ‘non-negotiated outcomes’. The extensive diplomatic groundwork around food systems undertaken in the run-up to COP28 confirms that the urgency to act is now widely understood internationally. However, this must be backed by concerted, ongoing and holistic action to match the rhetoric. In the longer term, the food systems reform agenda needs to be reinforced by continued advocacy and persistent and ambitious actions by politicians, industries and civil society.