Pantropical CO2 emissions and removals for the AFOLU sector in the period 1990–2018

Transparent, accurate, comparable, and complete estimates of greenhouse gas emissions and removals are needed to support mitigation goals and performance assessments under the Paris Agreement. Here, we present a comparative analysis of the agriculture forestry and other land use (AFOLU) emission estimates from different datasets, including National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (NGHGIs), FAOSTAT, the BLUE, OSCAR, and Houghton (here after updated H&N2017) bookkeeping models; Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR); and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We disaggregate the fluxes for the forestry and other land use (FOLU) sector into forest land, deforestation, and other land uses (including non-forest land uses), while agricultural emissions are disaggregated according to the sources (i.e., livestock, croplands, rice cultivation, and agricultural fires). Considering different time periods (1990–1999, 2000–2010, and 2011–2018), we analyse the trend of the fluxes with a key focus on the tropical regions (i.e., Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and South and Southeast Asia). Three of the five data sources indicated a decline in the net emissions over the tropics over the period 1990–2018. The net FOLU emissions for the tropics varied with values of 5.47, 5.22, 4.28, 3.21, and 1.17 GtCO₂ year⁻¹ (for BLUE, OSCAR, updated H&N2017, FAOSTAT, and NGHGIs, respectively) over the recent period (2011–2018). Gross deforestation emissions over the same period were 5.87, 7.16, 5.48, 3.96, and 3.74 GtCO₂ year⁻¹ (for BLUE, OSCAR, updated H&N2017, FAOSTAT, and NGHGIs). The net forestland sink was −1.97, −3.08, −2.09, −0.53, and −3.00 GtCO₂ year⁻¹ (for BLUE, OSCAR, updated H&N2017, FAOSTAT, and NGHGIs). Continental analysis indicated that the differences between the data sources are much large in sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia than in Latin America. Disagreements in the FOLU emission estimates are mainly explained by differences in the managed land areas and the processes considered (i.e., direct vs indirect effects of land use change, and gross vs net accounting for deforestation). Net agricultural emissions from cropland, livestock, and rice cultivation were more homogenous across the FAOSTAT, EDGAR, and EPA datasets, with all the data sources indicating an increase in the emissions over the tropics. However, there were notable differences in the emission from agricultural fires. This study highlights the importance of investing and improving data sources for key fluxes to achieve a more robust and transparent global stocktake.