The climate impact of municipal land policy

Ecosystems can store significant amounts of carbon dioxide and are therefore often considered as nature-based solutions to combat climate change. However, anthropogenic perturbations can turn these natural sinks to substantial sources for greenhouse gases. The climate impact of land use and land use change is well recognized on national and international level. Yet, municipalities which implement concrete measures on the ground, lack a tool to quantify the climate effect of their land use decisions.

Using the German city of Rostock (200.000 inhabitants) as an example, we present an approach to evaluate the climate effect of different land use trajectories in urban areas. The approach makes uses of municipal land use maps and complies with the IPCC inventory guidelines. Based on this emission assessment we can provide generic recommendations to exploit nature-based solutions for climate protection in municipal land policy.