Produced by WWF, February 2022.
UK governments have set ambitious and welcome climate and nature commitments,
but there is no shared vision for what our landscapes will look like in a net zero world
and a distinct lack of detail when it comes to the role of agriculture and land use. The
UK Net Zero Strategy5 set out unambitious emissions reductions plans for the English
agriculture, land use and food sectors, with little clarity on the policies to meet these
weak targets. This is echoed in equivalent strategies in Scotland and Wales.
In this report we aim to fill in some of this detail and consider what the agriculture
and land use sectors across the UK need to do, in order to put us on a nature-positive
pathway to meeting our climate commitments in 2030 and beyond. The independent
analysis we have commissioned has convinced us that it is possible and necessary to:
• Reduce UK direct agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least
35% by 2030 and 51% by 2050 on 2018 levels
• Switch UK land from a net source of GHG emissions to a net sink by 2040
at the very latest
• Halt and reverse the loss of UK nature by 2030
• Cut UK farming’s overseas carbon footprint particularly relating to soy
feed and fertiliser inputs by at least 31% by 2030 and 57% by 2050 on 2018
levels
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