Untitled

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to illustrate why an increasing biomass demand is of major importance when trying to achieve international climate protection goals. It shows that development goals can be reached by more climate friendly agriculture. The increasing demand for agricultural land is often answered by the conversion of natural land with a high carbon stock. This conversion is hence connected to a great carbon loss causing high greenhouse gas emissions. This increase in production has therefore to be examined critically. As such land use changes can occur not only direct but also indirect (indirect land use change, iLUC) legal regulations and instruments are necessary to reduce iLUC and support climate friendly agriculture. The analysis shows that the currently used and developed regulation instruments in Europe and the USA are highly speculative and doubtful. These countries work with global iLUC-factors, that are determined based on mathematical models for global future predictions. The paper presents alternative regulation approaches, which base on national level and the respective land use policies of the past.