Land use, land-use change, and forestry

[8] The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Article 4(1)(a) requires all Parties to "develop, periodically update, publish and make available to the Conference of the Parties" as well as "national inventories of anthropogenic emissions by sources" "removals by sinks of all greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol."

[9] The rules governing accounting and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions from LULUCF under the Kyoto Protocol are contained in several decisions of the Conference of Parties under the UNFCCC.

[14] IPCC estimates that land-use change (e.g. conversion of forest into agricultural land) contributes a net 1.6 ± 0.8 Gt carbon per year to the atmosphere.

For comparison, the major source of CO2, namely emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production, amount to 6.3 ± 0.6 Gt carbon per year.

[18] Land-use change alters not just atmospheric CO2 concentration but also land surface biophysics such as albedo and evapotranspiration, both of which affect climate.

Land management practices produce biophysical and biogeochemical effects on the forest, and following the model can increase the likelihood of success.

The period since 1950 has brought "the most rapid transformation of the human relationship with the natural world in the history of humankind". [ 1 ] Almost one-third of the world's forests, and almost two-thirds of its grassland, have been lost to human agriculture—which now occupies almost half the world's habitable land. [ 2 ]
Per capita greenhouse gas emissions by country including land-use change, in the year 2000 according to World Resources Institute
Share of the total land surface without and with consideration of multiple changes between six major land use/cover categories (urban area, cropland, pasture/rangeland, forest, unmanaged grass/shrubland, non-/sparsely vegetated land) in 1960–2019. [ 21 ]