Land‐use change is a major driver of biodiversity loss and a key contributor to GHG emissions, making sustainable land use essential for biodiversity preservation and climate change mitigation. The impacts of land use change are location‐specific, shaped by the biophysical context. Consequently, the extent and nature of these impacts are deeply influenced by the spatial configuration of land‐use change. This is particularly re...

The emerging field of prospective life cycle assessment (pLCA) offers opportunities for evaluating the environmental impacts of possible future consumption shifts. One such shift involves a transition from meat‐based to plant‐forward diets, acknowledged to mitigate environmental impacts of the food system under present day conditions. Current diets are often meat intensive (“meat‐based”), whilst “plant‐forward” diets include m...

Bioenergy is projected to have a prominent, valuable, and maybe essential, role in climate management. However, there is significant variation in projected bioenergy deployment results, as well as concerns about the potential environmental and social implications of supplying biomass. Bioenergy deployment projections are market equilibrium solutions from integrated modeling, yet little is known about the underlying modeling of...

Land‐based climate mitigation measures have gained significant attention and importance in public and private sector climate policies. Building on previous studies, we refine and update the mitigation potentials for 20 land‐based measures in >200 countries and five regions, comparing “bottom‐up” sectoral estimates with integrated assessment models (IAMs). We also assess implementation feasibility at the country level. Cost‐eff...

Afforestation is considered a cost‐effective and readily available climate change mitigation option. In recent studies afforestation is presented as a major solution to limit climate change. However, estimates of afforestation potential vary widely. Moreover, the risks in global mitigation policy and the negative trade‐offs with food security are often not considered. Here we present a new approach to assess the economic poten...

Scenario‐based biodiversity modelling is a powerful approach to evaluate how possible future socio‐economic developments may affect biodiversity. Here, we evaluated the changes in terrestrial biodiversity intactness, expressed by the mean species abundance (MSA) metric, resulting from three of the shared socio‐economic pathways (SSPs) combined with different levels of climate change (according to representative concentration p...

Cropland expansion threatens biodiversity by driving habitat loss and impacts carbon storage through loss of biomass and soil carbon (C). There is a growing concern land‐use change (LUC) to cropland will result in a loss of ecosystem function and various ecosystem services essential for human health and well‐being. This paper examines projections of future cropland expansion from an integrated assessment model IMAGE 3.0 under...

Most climate mitigation scenarios involve negative emissions, especially those that aim to limit global temperature increase to 2°C or less. However, the carbon uptake potential in land‐based climate change mitigation efforts is highly uncertain. Here, we address this uncertainty by using two land‐based mitigation scenarios from two land‐use models ( IMAGE and MA g PIE ) as input to four dynamic global vegetation models ( DGVM...

Understanding uncertainties in land cover projections is critical to investigating land‐based climate mitigation policies, assessing the potential of climate adaptation strategies and quantifying the impacts of land cover change on the climate system. Here, we identify and quantify uncertainties in global and European land cover projections over a diverse range of model types and scenarios, extending the analysis beyond the ag...

Model‐based global projections of future land‐use and land‐cover ( LULC ) change are frequently used in environmental assessments to study the impact of LULC change on environmental services and to provide decision support for policy. These projections are characterized by a high uncertainty in terms of quantity and allocation of projected changes, which can severely impact the results of environmental assessments. In this stu...