Answer given by Executive Vice-President Timmermans on behalf of the European Commission
4.4.2022
The European Climate Law[1] lays out the route to achieving EU climate neutrality by 2050 while ensuring continuous progress in adaptation to climate change. To follow this pathway, the Land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) Regulation review introduces an ambitious EU net removals target of 310 Million tonnes of CO2-equivalents by 2030.
Regarding the first question, the proposal promotes synergies between mitigation and adaptation actions, such as improved forest management, fire prevention, agroecology and agroforestry, soil carbon increase, and wetland restoration.
Such solutions can provide significant co-benefits for other land challenges, including biodiversity conservation, food security and combating desertification, as acknowledged by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change[2].
These solutions are particularly relevant for Spain, as highlighted by the Commission recommendations for its draft Common Agriculture Policy strategic plan[3] and the analysis of its recovery and resilience plan[4].
These solutions are also promoted by other EU initiatives, such as the EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change[5], the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030[6] and the EU Soil Strategy for 2030[7]. The Sustainable Carbon Cycles Communication[8] sets out an action plan for all landowners to make carbon removals a new green business model.
Regarding the last two questions, the enhanced effort is distributed between Member States based on their recent mitigation performance and land area.
Instead of complex rules and projections, as is the case under the current LULUCF Regulation, the proposed national targets lead to a fair distribution of effort based on transparent criteria and contribute to the overall objective of simplification.
- [1] Regulation (EU) 2019/1119
- [2] IPCC, 2019: Climate Change and Land: an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems. http://www.ipcc.ch/srccl
- [3] SWD(2020) 374 final
- [4] SWD (2021) 147 final
- [5] COM/2021/82 final
- [6] COM/2020/380 final
- [7] COM/2021/699 final
- [8] COM (2021) 800 final