Exploring future land use to tackle the climate and nature crisis

The RSPB is keen to support policies that achieve win-wins and avoid approaches that are bad for nature. That’s why we champion ‘Nature-based Solutions’. These are actions that tackle the nature and climate crisis together, in ways that benefit society.

We need to investigate how we can best use the land in the UK to meet the multiple challenges we face, and ensure that our actions don’t lead to unintended consequences elsewhere. Our latest study, released as part of the RSPB Land Use Scenarios Project, simulates 10,000 different future land use scenarios and calculates their impacts on nature, food production and achieving net zero. This new approach aims to identify better ways forward across multiple outcomes and builds on previous work in this area by Finch et al. (2023).

Alongside the rapid phasing out of fossil fuels, we also need to change how we use our land to meet our climate targets. This includes through changing farming practices and Nature-based Solutions such as creating woodland and restoring peatland. We also need UK land for new renewable energy infrastructure, for producing food and timber, to provide habitat for wildlife, and much more. While there are significant opportunities for both nature and climate, some trade-offs are unavoidable. This means we need more strategic planning to ensure we tackle the nature and climate crisis at the same time as making sure everyone has access to food to support healthy and sustainable diets.

In our 2023 Land Use Scenarios Project, we created nine scenarios to reflect different greenhouse gas emissions reduction strategies within the land sector. For each scenario we modelled the impact on:

• Greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and land use
• Habitat for birds
• Food and timber production

This was all with a view to understand the synergies and trade-offs between these outcomes. This work highlighted the need to evolve how we use our land to get the best outcomes for people, climate, and nature. However, the limited number of scenarios meant that we may have missed alternative pathways that give better outcomes.

In this latest study, we looked at thousands of different pathways using different combinations of land management actions, such as upland and lowland peatland restoration, woodland creation and agroforestry. We then assessed the ability of each scenario to meet nature, climate and food production objectives, and compared pathways to those from our 2023 study. 

The study shows once again that Nature-based Solutions can play a major role in helping the land sector to reach net zero, whilst also providing habitat for nature. It demonstrates the importance of thinking strategically to maximise multiple benefits. This will require more joined-up land use policies which ensure that we can achieve food security and make the most of the potential benefits for nature at home and overseas, whilst meeting our climate change mitigation targets.

In this study, there are many potential pathways modelled that do reach net zero, with wide-ranging impacts on food production and habitat for birds. Trade-offs with food production are unavoidable and still need to be managed carefully, but some pathways are clearly better than others.

Using the new modelling approach, we identified more favourable pathways to reaching net zero in the land sector than the previous 2023 study.

To make sure we’re making best use of our land, maximising the benefits and minimising the trade-offs, it’s vital that we see more joined-up and strategic land use policies across the UK.

Currently, the delivery of many Nature-based Solutions, such as restoring peatland and creating woodland, are falling short of UK Government targets. Our analysis suggests that for some measures, achieving the best outcomes will require deploying Nature-based Solutions at levels that exceed current government targets (eg creating woodland). We urgently need to speed up the delivery of nature-based solutions.

This research can help to identify the best possible ways forward to reach our goals and aid the design of policy to address nature, climate and food security together.

Read the full study here