Agriculture-related Climate Policies – Law and Governance Issues on the European and Global Level

This paper analyses an area of climate governance which is currently undergoing fast developments on the EU and international level: land use and in particular, agricultural land use. Despite all recent developments, current climate policies in the EU as a whole, but particularly land use policies, prove to be of little use in achieving the ambitious temperature limit set out in Article 2 Paragraph 1 of the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement limits global warming to a maximum of 1.5 to 1.8 degrees Celsius. Climate protection law is the basis for the energy transition, which consists at the moment of transforming the electricity sector. Agriculture has not really been integrated yet. In addition, climate governance vastly ignores the fact that different environmental issues (like biodiversity loss, soil degradation and disrupted nitrogen and phosphorus cycles) are interlinked, and that rebound and shifting effects occur. This is despite existing alternative policy options.