Impact of agricultural land conversion on climate change

Climate change and land use conversion are two major global environmental issues. A claim is made that climate change has brought new challenges for global land use, while land use conversion is hardly realized as a major driver for climate change. Using mapping techniques, this study aims to investigate the relationship between climate change and agricultural land conversion (ALC), by which land is converted from agricultural to other uses (e.g., urban areas, national and natural parks, roads, industrial areas, and afforestation projects). CO2 emission is considered as the main impact of climate change, and agricultural land conversion is regarded as the most important global land use. In this study, data are obtained from two databases: the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for the period of 1962–2011. Considering the FAO (2015) classification, the countries are categorized into five different groups (high-income non-OECD, high-income OECD, upper-middle-, lower-middle-, and low-income countries). Economies were divided into several income groups according to 2014 gross national income per capita. The results show that agricultural areas in high-income countries have decreased, while in low- to middle-income countries, they have increased. The highest CO2 emissions can be observed, especially in high-income countries, whereas the lowest CO2 emissions happen in the low- and lower-middle-income countries. The results further show that there is a positive relationship between CO2 emissions and ALC across the world. It can be observed that CO2 emission is increasing where agricultural area is declining. On the contrary, CO2 emission is declining where agricultural area is increasing.