land use

Last week, the federal government announced Canada’s 2020 greenhouse gas emissions dropped, in part thanks to trees removing carbon from the atmosphere. However, environmentalists are quick to point out this calculation excludes a huge chunk of emissions from the logging industry.

Federal and provincial agriculture ministers say they understand the seriousness of the conclusions in the latest major UN climate report urging land-use reform and that they have a plan to tackle—but few are able to articulate just what it is.

A leaked draft of a report on climate change and land use, which is now being debated in Geneva by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), states that it will be impossible to keep global temperatures at safe levels unless there is also a transformation in the way the world produces food and manages land.