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Land degradation is one of the biggest and most urgent challenges for humanity, UNE scientist Professor Annette Cowie believes. She is a co-author of the IPCC's Special Report on Climate Change and Land, released earlier this month.
The report is the first time the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has comprehensively looked at the relationship between climate and land.
It states that humanity can only keep global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels - a possibly catastrophic tipping-point - by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors, including land and food.
"The IPCC is trying to alert the international community that land is critical to meeting our challenges of climate change, but also for feeding humanity," Professor Cowie said.
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Human land use affects 70 per cent of the world's ice-free land surface, according to the report, while agriculture, forestry, and other land use activities produce 23 per cent of human-caused (anthropogenic) greenhouse gas emissions (13 per cent of carbon dioxide; 44 per cent of methane; 82 per cent of nitrous oxide).
Land degradation occurs over a quarter of the globe's ice-free land area, affecting 1.3 to 3.2 billion people, most living in poverty in developing countries.
Here in Australia, it takes the form of desertification - often the result of unsustainable grazing management that exposes bare soil to wind erosion; overclearing land; or dryland salinity.
"If we don't succeed in stopping the land degradation, and improving the health of our land, we are really going to suffer," Professor Cowie said.
Degradation both drives, and is exacerbated by, climate change, through emitting greenhouse gases and reduced rates of carbon uptake.
"Under climate change," Professor Cowie said, "the capacity of the land to address climate change is going to be diminished, and so will its productivity."
Professor Cowie and other scientists believe we must act now. Does she think we will act?
"Well, I'm certainly hopeful," she said. "To date, all the action that has been taken in international climate policy under the Kyoto Protocol for example has not actually succeeded in stopping the rate of emissions. The CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has continued to climb steadily throughout my entire lifetime. I find that very scary.
"But the evidence of climate change is continuing to mount, and more and more people are becoming aware of it and becoming sufficiently concerned that they're taking individual action."
Young people around the world tend to be more aware, and more concerned, than their elders - and some of them are taking action. Swedish teen Greta Thunberg is crossing the Atlantic in a zero-emissions yacht, while many students will strike next month, as they have in previous months.
"That gives me hope," Professor Cowie said, "that the younger generation will shame the older generations into actually taking action soon on climate change."
Professor Cowie is adjunct professor at UNE's School of Environmental and Rural Science, and principal climate research scientist at the NSW Department of Primary Industries. She is task leader of an International Energy Agency Bioenergy research network; land degradation advisor on the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel of the Global Environment Facility; and a member of the Science Policy Interface of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.
Next article: How sustainable land management could be a solution - but will we act soon enough?