Land-use, emissions, and sustainability futures across ScenarioMIP-CMIP7: a multi-model assessment
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Managing the global land system requires balancing food, energy, and material production with climate change mitigation and ecosystem conservation, while the agriculture, forestry, and other land use (AFOLU) sector accounts forroughly 20% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Here we provide the first multi-model assessment of land-use and AFOLU GHG futures for the new CMIP7 scenario generation, which spans scenarios of climate-policy failure to deep sustainability transformation, enriching the portfolio of assessed land-based mitigation options and addingexplicit demand-side and overshoot pathways. Using seven structurally diverse integrated assessment models (IAMs)across seven marker scenarios and a range of non-marker scenarios of ScenarioMIP-CMIP7, four findings emerge.Weak-policy pathways (H-SSP3, M-SSP2) fail simultaneously on climate change mitigation, food security, and biodiversity loss prevention, with continued agricultural expansion, deforestation, and high AFOLU emissions. Ambitious mitigation turns the land sector into a strong carbon sink by 2100, but the route matters: supply-side bioenergy and BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage; L-SSP2) deliver worse outcomes than integrated demand-side transformation (VL-SSP1) for biodiversity, agricultural non-CO₂ emissions, nitrogen pollution, and food security, a two-marker contrast rather than an ensemble result; delayed action (LN-SSP2, ML-SSP2, HL-SSP5) aggravates these challenges. Demand-side transformation (dietary shifts, food-waste reduction) and systemic supply-side productivity gains enable sustainable mitigation, consistent with the eradication of hunger assumed in VL-SSP1. Mitigation also reshapes land unevenly across regions (reforestation in Latin America, bioenergy feedstock production in Asia, and cropland expansion in Middle East & Africa under delayed action) concentrating the mitigation burden where governance and food security are often weakest, making the equity of these transitions decisive. By developing the CMIP7 markerscenarios across a structurally diverse model ensemble, this study provides a solid land-sector foundation for next sustainability assessments such as the IPCC AR7 and IPBES assessment cycles.
Authors: Popp, Alexander, Humpenöder, Florian, Angelkorte, Gerd, Azuero-Pedraza, Cindy, Doelman, Jonathan, Hasegawa, Tomoko, Wu, Yazhen, Zhao, Xin, Baptista, Luiz Bernardo, Beier, Felicitas, Bodirsky, Benjamin Leon, Bos, Astrid, Carvalho, Lucas, Chang, Jinfeng, Chen, David Meng-Chuen, Crawford, Michael, Dietrich, Jan Philipp, Drouet, Laurent, Frank, Stefan, Fricko, Oliver, Fujimori, Shinichiro, George, Mel, Gusti, Mykola, Havlík, Petr, Karstens, Kristine, Köhler-Schindler, Laurin, Kozicka, Marta, Kriegler, Elmar, Krisztin, Tamás, Leclère, David, Lessa Derci Augustynczik, Andrey, Lotze-Campen, Hermann, Luchtenbelt, Hermen, Mori, Shotaro, Palazzo, Amanda, Riahi, Keywan, Ringwald, Leopold, Rodés-Bachs, Clàudia, Rouet-Pollakis, Sibylle, Schaeffer, Roberto, Sivolella, Luis Felipe, Stehfest, Elke, Stevanović, Misko, van de Ven, Dirk-Jan, van Vuuren, Detlef, van Zeist, Willem-Jan, von Jeetze, Patrick, Weindl, Isabelle, Wögerer, Michael, Yamazaki, Koga
Institutions: University of Kassel, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment, CMCC Foundation - Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Utrecht University, Ritsumeikan University, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, University of Maryland, College Park, Zhejiang University, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Basque Centre for Climate Change, Wageningen University & Research
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7211955480