Land and ecosystem transitions

This programme studies the land, forests, oceans and ecosystems on which every transition draws, for food, materials, energy and carbon storage. Each hectare and each tonne of biomass can serve several uses, and each use forgoes the others.

It values land and biomass at their full cost, including the carbon and biodiversity an ecosystem would hold if it were left to recover, and follows the effects of a choice across products, regions and markets. It informs decisions on diets and agriculture, forestry and the bioeconomy, nature protection and land-use policy, from a single product to a continent.

When land grows food or yields wood, standard accounts count the emissions of the activity. They do not count the carbon the land would hold if it were left to natural vegetation: the carbon opportunity cost of land. Product accounting also sets to zero the forest carbon lost at harvest. Both choices make land look free. They decide whether a diet, a wood product or a European policy lowers emissions or moves them elsewhere.

1. 01Product-level climate costs of food, land included
2. 02Food and land scenarios to 2050
3. 03Product-level forest-carbon factors and break-even thresholds for substitution, once reviewed
4. 04A deliberation tool for European policymakers

Millennia contributes to a multi-stakeholder European research project in which research institutes work with policymakers and other stakeholders.