COP30 warning: Countries are leaning on forests instead of cutting fossil fuels

At the COP30 climate summit in Brazil, a new analysis of national pledges sends a stark warning. Instead of focusing on rapid cuts to fossil fuel use, many countries are leaning on forests and farmland to balance their emissions on paper.

The Land Gap 2025 report finds that national plans would allow about 20 million hectares of forest loss and damage each year this decade.

That single number shows how far reality is from the promises to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation.

Relying on carbon removal

Many governments say they will hit climate targets by ramping up carbon removal, the process of pulling carbon dioxide back out of the air.

Those plans lean on tree planting, restoring damaged ecosystems, and using crops for energy instead of tightening fossil fuel rules.

The work was led by Dr Kate Dooley, a climate policy researcher at the University of Melbourne (UM). Her research focuses on how land use, forests, and global finance shape fair and realistic climate pathways.

In a recent paper, Dr. Dooley’s team estimated that national climate pledges already implied about 990 million hectares of land for removals.

The Land Gap 2025 analysis shows that this figure has crept higher as more countries extend their long term climate targets to mid century.

The land gap in climate promises

The authors call this mismatch the land gap, the gap between land promised for removals and land that can be used safely.

By 2025, their calculations show national pledges would use over one billion hectares of land for such projects, a level they say cannot work.

Countries write these promises into nationally determined contributions (NDCs), each country’s climate action plan under the Paris Agreement, and into long term national strategies.

These documents set out how much pollution each country plans to cut, how quickly, and what role forests and farmland will play.

Because so many pledges lean on future land projects, they can hide weak near term cuts in fossil fuel use and industrial pollution.

The report warns that this slows the energy transition, the shift from coal, oil, and gas to cleaner power when it is most needed.

The new forest gap

An assessment from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization finds that the world is losing about 4 million hectares of forest each year. 

The Land Gap authors warn that without stronger action, this loss and hidden forest damage will undercut climate targets and make forest goals unreachable.

In the report, this shortfall is called the forest gap, the distance between lofty forest promises and what countries are actually planning to do.

That gap means less carbon stored in trees, more species pushed toward extinction, and higher risks of extreme heat, drought, and fires.

The authors point out that roughly one quarter of global forest cover has already been cleared, shrinking a major natural storehouse for carbon. 

Losing even more makes it harder to keep temperature rise near the Paris goal, and it weakens the resilience of communities facing climate shocks.

Forests on the chopping block

When countries carry heavy sovereign debt, the money a national government owes external lenders, they often feel forced to sell natural resources.

Many governments in the Global South then expand logging, mining, or soy and cattle farming into forests, while climate pledges say the opposite.

“Why are so many countries ignoring forest protection as a key pillar of climate targets. The answer is that they live in a world where heavy sovereign debt burdens and industry-friendly tax and trade policies force many of them to exploit forests to keep their economies from crashing,” said Dr Dooley.

The report argues that the global financial architecture, the rules and institutions that shape how money moves between countries, often rewards extraction over protection. 

Trade deals and tax breaks that favor crops, timber, and fossil fuels can box governments in and weaken rules on companies that clear forests.

Some projects don’t offer solutions

Large land-based carbon projects can also threaten land tenure, the rules that decide who controls land, especially for Indigenous Peoples and small farmers.

When new plantations or bioenergy crops move in, people can be pushed off farms or lose access to forests they depend on.

The authors note that many climate plans mention human rights, but they rarely spell out concrete protections for Indigenous communities and local land users.

Without clear rules, projects sold as climate solutions can end up repeating old patterns of land grabs, conflict, and environmental injustice.

“Healthy forests are essential to healthy economies,” said Dr Dooley. For communities that live in and around forests, that connection is not abstract, it shapes jobs, water supplies, and local weather.

A smarter way to use land

So what would more realistic land use look like in climate plans? The report points toward protecting forests, restoring degraded areas, and cutting fossil fuel use, while respecting ecosystem services, the benefits people get from nature.

The research highlights that ecosystem restoration and diverse farms can store carbon with fewer conflicts, while energy crop schemes carry risks for nature and people.

This bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) technology ties bioenergy plants to systems that trap carbon underground.

Other research shows that even if every pledge is met, the planet is heading toward almost 2 degrees Celsius of warming later this century. 

“This is only if countries meet their emissions targets on time and in full, and do not backslide further on current policy commitments, in which case these estimates would rise further,” said Dr Alister Self, a senior research analyst at Climate Resource.

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