Attributing Global Land Carbon Loss to Regional Agricultural and Forestry Commodity Consumption

One of the critical components in climate change mitigation lies in meeting the challenge of reducing global land carbon loss, as human demand increases. Yet, it is unclear which region and which form of commodity consumption were responsible for the greatest loss of land carbon. Here we assumed a uniform lifespan (20-year) for managed land and took the managed land in 2010 as a reference to estimate the land carbon loss for region-commodity on a global scale. The estimates and multi-region input-output table were then combined to identify the regions and commodities that contributed the most to global land carbon loss from the consumption side. The results show that during the lifespan, global consumption for agricultural and forestry commodities excluding wood fuel lost a total of 15.6 Pg in land carbon annually, of which 29% and 25% were attributed to beef and wood consumption, respectively. Land carbon loss per capita consumption was highest in high-income regions (Australia, the United States, Canada, Japan, and Europe) primarily due to the high consumed quantity for commodities per capita in these areas. Further, the net importers for land carbon were usually high-income regions (they held lower land carbon loss per unit of production), which was not conducive to reducing global land carbon loss. The research could contribute to discussions of climate responsibility and then inform climate mitigation policies.