Cost-effective climate change mitigation through land sector contributions

Abstract Climate change mitigation from Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) comes with severe sustainability risks and faces major implementation challenges. Yet, the consequences of missing out on AFOLU mitigation potential for the transition of the energy sector and the achievability of climate objectives are not well understood. Here, using the Integrated Assessment Modeling framework REMIND–MAgPIE, we derive future mitigation pathways under different AFOLU policy portfolios. We show that, without AFOLU contributions to mitigation, limiting warming to 1.5 °C is out of reach within the twenty-first century and for keeping peak warming below 1.7 °C consumption loss relative to a current-policy baseline increases from 1.3% to 3.5%. A portfolio of options alleviates the burden of energy sector decarbonization and substantially reduces energy price markups, but puts the AFOLU sector under stress. We show that prudent policy measures, such as limiting total bioenergy use to 100 EJ yr −1 and restricting CH 4 and N 2 O pricing to US$75 per tonne of CO 2 equivalent, can largely attenuate this pressure by reducing the need for yield increases and diminishing food price markups without severely compromising the achievability of climate targets. Our findings highlight both the need for effective climate action in the AFOLU sector and the importance of balanced and judicious sectorally aligned policies.