Climate Change and Land – seminar about the new IPCC special report

In August 2019 IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) will release its Special Report “Climate Change and Land: an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems”. In this seminar we will learn directly from IPCC authors about the panel’s findings on how land-use, such as agriculture and forestry, and climate change interact.

Ecosystems on land, on which we depend for much of our food, energy and materials, are deeply impacted by a changing climate. Functioning terrestrial ecosystems are also important for mitigation as well as adaptation to climate change. The challenges are many, complicated and very large, which also the IPBES report on biodiversity released in May 2019 emphasised. IPBES identified land use change as the greatest driver of losses in terrestrial ecosystem diversity and functionality, while climate change is the third greatest driver, but of growing importance.

Some of the questions to be addressed by the scientists and the panel reflecting on the report are: What are the implications of the IPCC report for sustainable land-use and management of terrestrial ecosystems globally and in Sweden? What choices are we confronted with? How can we meet the expected increasing biomass demand for food, energy and materials while adapting to and mitigating climate change? What do we know about regional differences in how land-use and climate interact? Are there solutions that may meet the double challenges of climate change and degradation of terrestrial ecosystems?