Land in Demand
Agriculture is the main driver of global land demand, while housing, infrastructure, biodiversity, and climate needs intensify pressure on it. Sustainable land use requires balancing these competing demands.
Land is fundamental to human survival and prosperity. It creates a sense of identity and provides the food, fibre, shelter, and raw materials essential for our existence. Roughly 10 billion hectares of land – only a fifth of the Earth’s landmass – are habitable. Nearly half of this area is dedicated to agriculture, while the rest supports vital ecosystem services, such as soil formation, water filtration, and the preservation of genetic resources. Forests, for instance, which cover 4 billion hectares, are natural carbon sinks that help regulate the climate.
Grasslands, which cover about 14 percent of habitable land, are another critical ecosystem that are vital for biodiversity and carbon sequestration. Human settlements and infrastructure currently occupy just 100 million hectares – 1 percent of the Earth’s habitable land. However, demands on land are likely to intensify over the coming decades as the global population approaches 10 billion people.
Land-use changes are driven by growing demand for food, energy, natural resources, and urban land, linked to population growth and resource-intensive consumption. If the world remains on its current trajectory, an additional 600 million hectares of land will be needed solely for agriculture. Population growth and urbanisation have also led to a substantial expansion of built-up urban areas and infrastructure. By 2050, two thirds of the world’s population are projected to live in cities, for which around 80 million hectares of additional urban land will be needed. Infrastructural and industrial development as a result of economic growth and improving living standards further intensify demands on land.
These pressures have already had sobering consequences. Human activity has transformed over 70 percent of the Earth’s land area, with 20–40 percent of land degraded to some extent. Cropland expansion and livestock grazing account for almost 90 percent of deforestation worldwide. This widespread transformation of land contributes to unprecedented environmental degradation and climate change. Extreme weather events and other impacts of climate change accelerate land degradation by reducing soil quality, water resources, and biodiversity. And yet, despite an annual loss of 12 million hectares of productive land to desertification and drought alone, the demand for land is not losing momentum.
Figure 1
Humanity destroyed one third of the world's forests
Most of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are intrinsically linked to land and its resources. For instance, SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) relies on land for agriculture, SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) requires land for renewable energy infrastructure, SDG 13 (Climate Action) leverages land for carbon sequestration, and SDG 15 (Life on Land) emphasizes the protection and restoration of terrestrial ecosystems. Similarly, states rely on land to meet their commitments under the three Rio Conventions – on climate change, biological diversity, and desertification. This over-reliance on land creates a scenario in which the same land needed to meet food, housing and energy demands is also tasked with capturing carbon or conserving biodiversity.
Underlying these seemingly endless demands is an illusion of abundant, untapped land waiting to be utilized. But as humanity continues to exceed many of our planetary boundaries, greater attention must be given to the physical limits of land. Unsustainable land-use trends and practices, combined with the high expectations placed on land to meet global development and sustainability goals, further obscure this reality.
Treating land as abundant land has serious implications. First, building global sustainability, climate, and environment agendas on this false premise can jeopardize their success. Second, much of the land committed is home to diverse ecosystems and human communities that depend on land and its resources for their livelihoods, health, and cultural identity. However, communities’ land rights are regularly violated as a direct result of growing land demands.
Figure 2
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Global commitments largely overlook the land rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, including both legal and customary rights to use, control, and transfer land. For example, although land plays a critical role in sustainable development, only 3 of the 17 SDGs considers land rights. Similarly, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change lacks any reference to land rights even though land use and land-based measures are crucial for climate action. Consequently, decisions about land use often entail trade-offs with far-reaching impacts on ecosystems and local communities. The lack of adequate recognition of land rights in global goals and commitments exacerbates these challenges, highlighting the need for more inclusive and responsible land governance.
The way we manage land is critical to a sustainable and carbon-neutral future, shaping the health and prosperity of our planet for generations to come. We need equitable strategies that recognise and respect diverse land users, their rights, and the limits of land, while fully considering the ecological, social, and economic dimensions of land use.