EIRES lecture - Timothy D. Searchinger - Princeton University
Channel: OpenWebcast
Date: 2022-03-18

Europe’s Land Future: Implications of the EU’s Fit for 55 Plan on Land Use, Climate Change, and Biodiversity
Land use plays an important role in the European Commission’s proposed  Fit for 55 Plan. Statements supporting the plan claim that it will tackle climate change by sequestering more carbon in Europe and that it will also help to improve biodiversity. Europe’s stage of development makes it possible for Europe to reduce the area of land it needs to feed itself. With the right policies,  more land could become freed from agricultural use to reestablish forests, valuable habitats and to eliminate Europe’s net reliance on foreign land for agricultural products. The energy provisions of the plan, however, create vast incentives to dedicate land and forest resources to bioenergy. As a result, Commission modeling indicates that little to no extra land in Europe will be available to store more carbon or to improve biodiversity.  Europe will also likely continue to rely heavily on agricultural land in the tropics for its agricultural products, contributing to global forest and habitat loss. This talk will explore the opportunities for European land to help address the climate and biodiversity crises. It will also discuss the likely consequences of the proposed Fit for 55 plan, and ways the plan could be improved.