Climate Crisis

Reimagining our future landscapes for a net zero world

Big changes to land use are needed for Ireland to become climate-neutral by 2050

A 26-90 per cent reduction in grassland for grazing all animals would be needed to meet the 2050 emissions target. Photograph: Irina Belcikova

Yvonne Buckley
Thu Mar 28 2024 - 06:00

What will our landscape look like in 2050? The future is uncertain, but we know that we must limit global warming to 1.5 degrees to avoid dangerous climate change. In the absence of a crystal ball, an international team of researchers led by George Bishop and Colm Duffy from the University of Galway have run thousands of land use scenarios to explore what uses future landscapes might be composed of under different definitions of net zero by 2050.

The 3,000 land use scenarios represent many possible futures with substantial differences between them, but despite these differences some common features emerged. The land use scenarios that achieved net zero emissions had larger areas of forestry and rewetted peat soils but lower numbers of cows and sheep. Forestry would need to more than double, with increases of 2.4 to 3.9 times by 2050. Milk and beef outputs were substantially lower than 2021 levels across all scenarios that achieved net zero.

Milk production is much more profitable than sheep or beef production so if milk production were to be maintained close to current levels, large changes in the national landscape would be required. A 26-90 per cent reduction in grassland for grazing all animals would be needed, together with a 47-387 per cent increase in forest land. There would also have to be up to a 98 per cent reduction in suckler beef output and up to a 97 per cent reduction in sheep populations.

In just 26 years we have committed to net zero by 2050, which is needed to keep global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees or well below 2 degrees. To achieve net zero we will need to layer many uses on to a limited supply of land. Our land will be used for renewable energy in the form of solar and wind farms, sustainable food production, forestry and for the conservation and restoration of nature. We have a legally binding commitment to transition to “a climate resilient, biodiversity rich, environmentally sustainable and climate neutral economy” by 2050. We will need our land to work hard to achieve all these commitments.

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Some of the changes in land use needed to achieve our climate action goals will be positive for biodiversity, including the reduction of nutrients flowing into our lakes and rivers due to reduction in fertiliser use and slurry from livestock. Biodiversity will benefit from increases in wetland areas and restoration of high-carbon-value ecosystems such as bogs, native woodlands and salt marshes. Other changes may be negative for biodiversity, such as increases in monocultures of non-native trees, the removal of low-intensity grazing in economically marginal but high-nature-value farming systems, and inappropriately sited and unmitigated renewable energy installations.

All sectors of the economy and society will need to undergo deep changes to achieve the national climate objective. The agriculture, forestry and land use sector is, however, the largest contributor to Ireland’s green house gas emissions, responsible for more than 40 per cent of emissions. The emissions from this sector are growing rather than reducing as livestock numbers continue to increase and afforestation rates remain low. It is therefore getting more, rather than less, challenging to achieve net zero in the land use sector.

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At a minimum, land use needs to meet an agreed definition of net zero, but we will also need land use in the future to remove CO2 to remain within the boundaries of dangerous climate change. Shifting land use to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere will mean that native and non-native forestry, bog restoration and peatland soil rewetting will become much more important over the coming years.

Land use change will require vision and brave leadership. There are many possible futures before us, but all require difficult decisions and trade-offs. As we decide which path to follow, we need to reimagine our future landscapes for a net zero world. In addition to scientific research on which net zero landscapes are compatible with our national climate objective, we also need new representations of what our landscapes will look like, what they will deliver for us and how we will interact with them.

We need artists, thinkers, foresters, land managers, farmers, singers, storytellers, nature lovers, children, older people, men and women to explore visions for our countryside in just 26 years’ time.

Prof Yvonne Buckley is a co-director of the international Co-Centre for Climate + Biodiversity + Water

Trinity College Dublin (TCD)University of GalwayBiodiversityClimate change