Researchers said Tuesday that humanity has repurposed land equal to Africa and Europe combined in the last 60 years, whether it’s converting forests into cropland or savannah into pastures.
According to a report published in Nature Communications, the total area of such changes since 1960 is around 43 million square kilometers, four times more than previous estimates.
“Since land use is so important for climate mitigation, biodiversity, and food production, understanding its full dynamics is necessary for sustainable land-use strategies,” lead author Karina Winkler, a physical geographer at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands told AFP.
As per the report, Earth’s overall forest cover has shrunk by nearly a million km2, while cropland and pasture areas have also risen by approximately the same amount since 1960.
Plants and soil absorb about 30% of manmade carbon emissions, particularly in tropical forests, so large-scale landscape changes could determine whether the Paris Agreement’s temperature targets are met or not.
