Read more in the December 12th edition of Invert Insights.
The 2025 Land Gap Report delivers a sobering assessment of how countries’ climate pledges continue to rely excessively on land-based carbon removals while failing to address the root causes, largely due to an over-reliance on future carbon removal and structural issues within the global economic system that incentivize environmental destruction. Despite new climate pledges submitted ahead of COP30, the report finds that the world is moving further, not closer, to meeting global climate and biodiversity goals. A combination of unrealistic land-use expectations, persistent forest loss, and entrenched economic rules has widened both the land gap and the forest gap, undermining the stability of ecosystems and the rights and livelihoods of communities who depend on them.
At the core of the report is an updated assessment of land area included in national climate pledges. Countries now collectively rely on over 1 billion hectares (ha) of land to achieve future carbon removals, an area larger than China. This represents an increase from the 2022 and 2023 assessments and signals that governments are doubling down on land-based climate strategies instead of rapidly phasing out fossil fuels.
Nearly half of this land, or 441 million ha, which currently supports food production, biodiversity, and Indigenous and local communities, would need to be converted into carbon removal activities. The report warns that such large-scale land conversion would create “severe social and ecological trade-offs that far outweigh potential climate benefits.” At the same time, ecosystem restoration (which accounts for 572 million ha of pledges) remains a more sustainable path.
Importantly, a handful of high-emitting countries, including Canada, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the US, account for more than 70% of all land-based carbon removal pledges. This indicates a continued deferral of near-term emissions reductions in favor of hypothetical removals decades in the future. The report concludes that mitigation pathways dependent on “unproven or unsustainable levels of land carbon removals represent a backslide rather than progress toward net-zero.”
The result is a widening land gap: a mismatch between the land countries claim they will use for removals and what is actually feasible, safe, and socially just.
Alongside the land gap, the report introduces a comprehensive assessment of the global forest gap, defined as the difference between countries’ climate pledges and the agreed global goal of halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation by 2030.
The findings are alarming:
Forest degradation, which ranges from logging and fire to fragmentation, is described as a hidden crisis occurring at higher rates than deforestation and undermining ecosystem integrity worldwide.
Despite global political commitments, most recently reinforced by all Parties to the Paris Agreement through the COP28 Global Stocktake and subsequent UN forums, countries’ national climate plans rarely include measurable, enforceable actions to halt forest loss. Only 38 countries reference deforestation reductions, and just 18 address degradation; even fewer include both. Without stronger, more consistent policies, the report warns that the world’s growing forest gap will jeopardize both climate stability and biodiversity.
The report attributes much of the persistent forest and land loss to extractivism: economic systems centered on the extraction of natural resources, often for export, with benefits accruing far from the lands being exploited. Commodities such as soy, cattle, timber, and palm oil continue to drive more than half of global forest loss, even as millions face hunger and ecosystems lose resilience.
In 2024 alone, 7.2 million ha of forests were lost, releasing 4 gigatons of CO₂. Meanwhile, extreme fires in 2023 and 2024 reduced forests’ carbon uptake capacity to just one-quarter of normal levels.
Despite decades of initiatives, like the New York Declaration on Forests and the Glasgow Forest and Land Use Declaration, the report concludes that most commitments have failed to translate into meaningful implementation, largely due to entrenched economic and institutional barriers.
One of the report’s most important contributions is its analysis of how the global economic system itself, including its rules, incentives, and power structures, creates conditions for the land and forest gaps to persist. Countries, particularly in the Global South, operate under economic rules that limit their policy space and force reliance on extractive industries to maintain financial stability.
These pressures include:
The report argues that these factors push governments toward development pathways that destroy forests and increase emissions, even when those approaches contradict national mandates or international climate goals.
Meanwhile, wealthy nations benefit from inequitable carbon accounting rules, which allow them to underreport emissions tied to imported goods while pressuring developing countries to shoulder disproportionate mitigation burdens.
The authors conclude that climate and biodiversity goals cannot be met without transforming global economic governance, including debt relief, tax reform, trade policy restructuring, and new rules governing capital flows.
The report highlights how sovereign debt traps nations in a cycle where they must expand extractive industries to generate foreign exchange needed for repayment. This pressure weakens governments’ ability to protect marginalized communities and ecosystems. An alternative approach, and one that includes meaningful debt relief from all creditors, is essential for enabling countries to invest in forest protection and sustainable development.
International tax reform emerges as a major lever for change. The report notes that democratizing tax rules and improving transparency could recover hundreds of billions of dollars currently lost to illicit financial flows, tax havens, and profit shifting; funds that could support land rights, forest governance, and climate adaptation.
Similarly, addressing the hyper-concentration of agricultural value chains and the corporate influence embedded in trade rules is essential for shifting toward food sovereignty and resilient ecosystems. Existing frameworks, such as the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), are important but insufficient without tackling deeper power asymmetries.
Although indigenous peoples and local communities manage some of the world’s most biodiverse and carbon-rich lands, the report finds that very few national climate pledges include clear commitments to strengthen land rights, tenure, or the principle of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC). Only 10 countries make explicit rights-based commitments, and only 8 refer directly to FPIC.
This represents a major missed opportunity, as rights-based approaches are among the most effective, equitable, and low-cost strategies for climate mitigation and restoration.
The authors conclude with a clear warning: relying on unrealistic carbon removal scenarios while failing to reform the global economy only postpones action and deepens the crisis. The path forward must prioritize emission reductions, ecosystem restoration, indigenous rights, and systemic changes that move the world away from extraction and toward restoration.
Invert Insights.
💡 Ultimately, achieving climate and biodiversity goals requires more than better pledges; it requires a fundamental transformation of the global economic system. Without addressing the structural drivers of land exploitation and forest loss, the world’s ability to meet the Paris Agreement, halt ecosystem collapse, and safeguard human rights will remain out of reach.
💡 Governments’ updated climate pledges submitted to the UNFCCC continue to depend heavily on land-based carbon removal, a strategy deemed unrealistic and unsustainable at the scale currently proposed. In contrast, activities involving ecosystem restoration account for the remaining 572 million ha pledged. Restoration, such as regenerating degraded forests and wetlands, aligns better with sustainability goals by enhancing carbon storage while supporting biodiversity and livelihoods, and is seen as the more sustainable path. Ultimately, effective climate action won’t come from a single solution. It will require a layered approach centred around combining multiple meaningful, measurable strategies working together to deliver real, durable impact.
