Leading global charity Oxfam has come out strongly against countries and corporations that have published ambitious net-zero-carbon targets based on mitigation measures to capture emissions involving land use while failing to make specific emissions cuts in their business.

Oxfam has calculated that all the farmland on the planet would be required to deliver planned carbon removal. Net zero achieved this way brings a real risk of fuelling a surge in demand for land in low – and middle-income countries with the consequence of mass displacement of people and hunger.

Net zero misleading

The report describes net zero targets as risky because they distract from the hard work of cutting carbon emissions by ending the use of coal, oil and gas for transport and energy.

It says countries and corporations could continue to pollute the atmosphere but that this will be offset by some as yet virtually unproven technologies or “a level of land use that is completely impossible and would lead to mass hunger and displacement of people across the world”.

The report calls out several corporations, in particular energy companies based on use of fossil fuels, as the major offenders. It identifies that the top four global oil and gas companies are focused on mitigation measures that would require an area twice the size of the UK. If the oil and gas sectors in their entirety were to adopt such a net-zero policy, they could require an area of land half the size of the US or one-third of all the world’s farmland.

Basically, Oxfam is calling out big emitters for “using land as a carbon farm ... while sidestepping the actual hard work required to cut emissions”.

The charity is calling on the Glasgow climate summit that takes place in November to put in place “real, transparent, concrete and time-bound cuts to carbon”. It also describes “a forest of flimsy net-zero targets for 2050” as letting governments and corporations off the hook.

No free pass for agriculture

While advocating for land use to be focused on productive agriculture, Oxfam also calls for a “shift away from conventional models of large scale and monoculture industrial agriculture.”

They want a switch to more ecologically sustainable farming and grazing practices, with reduced tillage and improved grass varieties, nutrient and water management.

Oxfam also promotes the positive role agroforestry can play and they identify reduction in meat consumption and food waste as ways emissions could be reduced from food systems and land use.

Analysis

As a leading global charity operating in the front line of tackling hunger and poverty, Oxfam’s views on global land use merit attention.

Its view on what it would describe as industrial agriculture is open to challenge – for example African swine fever decimated the Chinese pig herd because the small-scale open pig production system facilitated the rampant spread of the disease, with biosecurity non-existent.

It is no surprise that the Chinese government policy for rebuilding is to focus on large-scale biosecure units that minimise the risk of disease spread.

Notwithstanding this, the briefing paper makes a very relevant and timely point about the consequences of the scramble by governments and corporations to achieve net zero, with particular emphasis on the word “net.”

By adding the word net to zero emissions businesses are able to project that they are doing the right thing whereas in fact they are doing the opposite. What they are doing in reality is grabbing more of a finite land resource to mitigate their emissions rather than do the harder work of reducing emissions.

This competes with the need for land to produce food for a growing global population and inevitably it is the poorest countries that will be most affected.

Overall, the report is a timely reminder of the importance in dedicating farmland to food production, not as a resource to be exploited by high emitters to offset their emissions through planting trees instead of cutting their emissions.

There is also a valid debate to take place on how exactly land should be farmed to maximise its output with minimum emissions and environmental impact.

Replacing cattle with trees on Irish farms, like the whole concept of net zero carbon, may sound a simple solution but it isn’t.