EU Climate Policy Implications for Land Use in Norway: Managing Trade-offs and Achieving Policy Coherence

EU climate policy will have great significance for Norwegian climate, energy, forestry, and land-use policy in the years leading up to 2030 and beyond. Conflicts and trade-offs between climate, energy, and nature considerations are challenges that we will increasingly have to deal with. The ClimaLand project will investigate trade-offs between policy goals, governance levels, and sector interests, and seek to identify how to design more coherent climate and land-use policies. An important objective is to investigate how conflicting policy goals can be handled and various considerations and land-use interests balanced. The point of departure for ClimaLand is an examination of the EU Fit for 55 package and its policy implications for Norway. This is followed by a cross-sectoral examination of the biggest sources of Norwegian Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) emissions sources and the most important drivers of these, providing the basis for in-depth studies of potential synergies and trade-offs between policy goals, -levels and sector interests. The policy areas examined are i) the potential for increasing the forest sink capacity in the short-, medium- and long-term and how forest owners as key actors can affect this capacity, ii) the Norwegian ban on developing peatlands and its implications for land use, and iii) renewable energy developments and implications for land use. Based on these studies, ClimaLand will produce new, interdisciplinary knowledge about how EU climate policy affects land-use in Norway, and how Norway can achieve its 2030 climate targets whilst managing trade-offs between policy goals, -levels, and sector interests.

The EU Fit for 55 climate policy package challenges existing sectoral policies, not only in Norway but in all EU member states and affiliated countries. Responding to the need for implementing coherent policies to address the intertwined problems of climate change, land-use change, and biodiversity, ClimaLand will produce new, interdisciplinary knowledge about how EU climate policy affects land-use in Norway, and how Norway can achieve its 2030 climate targets whilst managing trade-offs between policy goals, -levels, and sector interests. The point of departure for ClimaLand is an examination of the EU Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) Regulation and other parts of the Fit for 55 package and the policy implications for Norway. This is followed by a cross-sectoral examination of the biggest sources of Norwegian LULUCF emissions sources and the most important drivers of these, providing the basis for in-depth studies of potential synergies and trade-offs between policy goals, -levels and sector interests. The policy areas examined are i) the potential for increasing the forest sink capacity in the short-, medium- and long-term and how forest owners as key actors can affect this capacity, ii) the Norwegian ban on developing peatlands and its implications for land use, and iii) renewable energy developments and implications for land use. Based on these studies, ClimaLand will develop policy recommendations on how a high level of land-use policy coherence can be achieved whilst managing trade-offs between policy goals, -levels and sector interests – within and across sectors. The project rests on a mixed-methods, interdisciplinary approach, with close collaboration between researchers with background in political science, natural sciences, economics, and law, and where collaborating partners are integrated in knowledge production.