This report looks at how Governments are using land in climate pledges to remove carbon dioxide. An international team analyzed new NDCs and long-term climate pledges for commitments for 2050, and 2060 — looking at the implications for land use. They calculated how much land is included in national climate pledges: over 1 billion ha. That’s about two thirds of the world’s arable land.
At the same time, governments are failing to take seriously targets to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation by 2030 – resulting in a “Forest Gap” of almost 20 million hectares of annual forest loss and destruction in 2030 based on current commitments, where 40% of countries have submitted a new climate pledge up to November 2025.
The 2025 Land Gap Report shows that NDCs are failing to articulate the needed transitions, both by over relying on land to remove carbon – thereby delaying the required energy transition, and by failing to commit states to urgent action to halt emissions from forest loss and degradation. These cannot be achieved without significant negative impacts on livelihoods, land rights, and ecosystems.
Conventional explanations for the failure to halt deforestation and forest degradation tend to focus on lack of: political will, financial resources, commitment from private sector actors and state capacity to implement decisions. What is rarely discussed is how the current structure of global economic governance—the political economic ‘rules of the game’—constrain a country’s policy and fiscal autonomy to take necessary actions aligned with climate and biodiversity deforestation. This report sketches the needed reforms that move towards a restorative, rights-based economic model.
Key Messages
- Land Gap: Governments’ updated climate pledges rely heavily on land-based carbon removal—requiring an area larger than China—while delaying meaningful climate action until later in the century.
- Forest Gap: Current commitments allow for the continued loss and degradation of 20 million hectares of forest each year by 2030:
– 4 million hectares of deforestation (less than a 50% reduction from today’s rates), and
– 16 million hectares of forest degradation (less than a 10% decline from current levels). - Global Economic Governance Reform: Many governments depend on expanding extractive industries that generate emissions and contribute to forest destruction—often in contradiction to the wishes of their own citizens. Transforming global economic governance is essential for meeting climate and biodiversity goals.
- Sovereign Debt: Alternative approaches to sovereign debt crises could give governments the fiscal space needed to regulate commodity sectors and protect Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and critical ecosystems. This requires all creditors—including bondholders, multilateral development banks, and sovereign lenders—to provide meaningful debt relief to low- and middle-income countries.
- Tax: Democratizing tax policy at national and international levels is crucial for generating the revenue needed to secure forest and land rights and to shift the global economy toward restoration.
- Trade: Economic development must be rooted in food sovereignty, the right to food, and the protection of resilient ecosystems.
Or learn more on The Land Gap website
Contacts: Jessica Dempsey
