Rethinking Land in the Anthropocene: from Separation to Integration

Only if there is a fundamental change in the way we manage land we can reach the targets of climate-change mitigation, avert the dramatic loss of biodiversity and make the global food system sustainable. The German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) proposes five multiple-benefit strategies illustrating ways of overcoming competition between rival claims to the use of land. These should be promoted by five governance strategies, especially by setting suitable framework conditions, reorienting EU policy and establishing alliances of like-minded states.

Landwende im Anthropozän: Von der Konkurrenz zur Integration
Image: WBGU

Land is the basis of human life. With climate change, the mass extinction of biological diversity and an often dysfunctional food system, we are experiencing three colliding global crises that are directly linked to the way we manage land. Yet the land and its biologically productive ecosystems are under more pressure than ever before. This is the starting point of the present report: Which strategies for managing terrestrial ecosystems are most suitable for defusing the existing competition between different forms of land use while simultaneously ensuring climate-change mitigation, biodiversity conservation and food security? How can transformative change towards sustainable land use be promoted and which actors need to be mobilized and become involved? What challenges does this pose for research and for Germany's role in global environmental and development policy?

Read the summary of the report, see below

Pages: 326

Source: WBGU – Wissenschaftlicher Beirat der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveränderungen (2020): Landwende im Anthropozän: Von der Konkurrenz zur Integration. Berlin: WBGU.


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