About Land Use and Net Zero

The climate crisis is one of the paramount challenges the world faces, and alongside biodiversity and pollution crises, constitute existential threats to lives and livelihoods in the UK.

The way land is used will be a key component of any efforts to meet these challenges- agriculture and other land use accounts for roughly 12% of UK greenhouse gas emissions, and turning land from a source to a sink of emissions is integral to efforts to reach net zero.

Land use is also at the heart of the biodiversity and pollution crises (with one in six species at risk of becoming extinct in Great Britain), and land use change will be inevitable for meeting national nature restoration targets.

Beyond this, land use decisions have an impact on food security, energy production (especially renewables), water provision and flood management.

Follow the links below to find out about why land use is important and how it is governed, as well as our library of published research on the topics the LUNZ Hub will be covering.