Part Four / What We’ve Done About It

4.11 Our Imprint on the Land

All online sources accessed on

  1. diets that are also increasing household food waste Bodirsky, B., et al., ‘The ongoing nutrition transition thwarts long-term targets for food security, public health and environmental protection’, Scientific Reports, 10, 2020: Article 19778, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75213-3.

    the great majority of the total mammal biomass Bar-On, Y. M., et al., ‘The biomass distribution on Earth’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115 (25), 2018: 6506–11, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1711842115.

    The production of crops has increased since 1961 Arneth, A., et al., ‘Framing and context’, in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 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, ed. P. R. Shukla et al., 2019, https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/.

  2. around three quarters of the Earth’s ice-free land surface Winkler, K., et al., ‘Global land use changes are four times greater than previously estimated’, Nature Commuincations, 12, 2021: Article 2501, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22702-2.

    about 37 million square kilometres Alexander, P., et al., ‘Human appropriation of land for food: the role of diet’, Global Environmental Change, 41, 2016: 88–98, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.09.005.

    the dominant share of the total forested area … is used by humans Erb, K.-H., et al., ‘Unexpectedly large impact of forest management and grazing on global vegetation biomass’, Nature, 553 (7786), 20118: 73–6, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25138.

    Less than half of all forest area has been estimated to contain old trees Pugh, T. A. M., et al., ‘Role of forest regrowth in global carbon sink dynamics’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116 (10), 2019: 4382–7, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1810512116.

    the volume of agricultural goods being traded internationally Krausmann, F., and Langthaler, E., ‘Food regimes and their trade links: a socio-ecological perspective’, Ecological Economics, 160, 2019: 87–95, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2019.02.011.

    most pastureland expansion has replaced natural grasslands Ramankutty, N., et al., ‘Trends in global agricultural land use: implications for environmental health and food security’, Annual Review of Plant Biology, 69, 2018: 789–815, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-arplant-042817-040256.

    about half of the Brazilian Cerrado has been transformed for use in agriculture Strassburg, B. B. N., et al., ‘Moment of truth for the Cerrado hotspot’, Nature Ecology and Evolution, 1 (4), 2017: Article 0099, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-017-0099.

    one of the most endangered biomes in the world Carbutt, C., et al., ‘Global plight of native temperate grasslands: Going, going, gone?’, Biodiversity and Conservation, 26 (12), 2017: 2911–32, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-017-1398-5.

    the majority of the world’s wetlands have also been lost Leifeld, J., et al., ‘Intact and managed peatland soils as a source and sink of GHGs from 1850 to 2100’, Nature Climate Change, 9 (12), 2019: 945–7, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0615-5; Humpenöder, F., et al., ‘Peatland protection and restoration are key for climate change mitigation’, Environmental Research Letters, 15 (10), 2020: Article 104093, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/abae2a.

    the global irrigation area has doubled, total nitrogen fertilizer used has increased by ten times Arneth et al., ‘Framing and context’.

  3. two thirds moderately and the remainder at low intensities Erb et al., ‘Unexpectedly large impact of forest management’.

    a rising burden of diseases such as diabetes and cancer Bodirsky et al., ‘The ongoing nutrition transition’.

    agricultural irrigation accounts for the great majority of human water withdrawals Rost, S., et al., ‘Agricultural green and blue water consumption and its influence on the global water system’, Water Resource Research, 44 (9), 2008: Article W09405, https://doi.org/10.1029/2007WR006331.

    Human-made nitrogen fertilizer … leaks into aquatic ecosystems Bodirsky, B. L., et al., ‘Reactive nitrogen requirements to feed the world in 2050 and potential to mitigate nitrogen pollution’, Nature Communications, 5, 2014: Article 3858, https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms4858.

    more species are now threatened with extinction than ever before Díaz, S., et al., ‘Assessing nature’s contributions to people’, Science, 359 (6373), 2018: 270–72, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aap8826.

  4. crucial effects in reducing biodiversity decline Pörtner, H. O., et al., Scientific Outcome of the IPBES–IPCC Co-sponsored Workshop on Biodiversity and Climate Change, Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2021, https://doi:10.5281/zenodo.4659158.