Journal article
Pathways to achieving nature-positive and carbon–neutral land use and food systems in Wales
- Abstract:
- Land use and its management can play a vital role in carbon sequestration, but trade-offs may exist with other objectives including food security and nature recovery. Using an integrated model (the FABLE calculator), four pathways, co-created with colleagues at the Welsh Government, towards achieving climate and biodiversity targets in Wales were explored: status quo, improvements on current trends, land sparing and land sharing. We found that continuing as usual will not be sufficient to meet Wales’s climate and biodiversity targets. In contrast, the land use and agricultural sector became a net carbon sink in both the land sparing and land sharing pathways, through high afforestation targets, peatland restoration, reducing food waste and moving towards a healthier diet. Whilst both pathways released land for biodiversity, the gains were greater in the land sharing pathway, which was also less dependent on optimistic assumptions concerning productivity improvements. The results demonstrate that alternative approaches to achieving nature-positive and carbon–neutral land use and food systems may be possible, but they come with stringent and transformative requirements for policy changes, with an integrated approach necessary to maximise benefits for climate, food and nature.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.3MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1007/s10113-023-02041-2
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer
- Journal:
- Regional Environmental Change More from this journal
- Volume:
- 23
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 37
- Publication date:
- 2023-02-09
- Acceptance date:
- 2023-01-24
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1436-378X
- ISSN:
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1436-3798
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1329056
- Local pid:
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pubs:1329056
- Deposit date:
-
2023-03-02
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Jones et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2023
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2023. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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