Examples of natural habitats that capture carbon; forests (top left), saltmarshs (top right), seagrass meadows (bottom left), and mangrove forests (bottom right)
Imagine a future where people, nature and the climate are living peacefully side by side!
You might imagine beavers building homes in urban waterways, bats soaring overhead at dusk and dawn, or moss and wildflowers filling people’s lawns. A place where people live in harmony with the land and sustainably extract its resources.
Or maybe, you imagine a mix of sprawling forests and brilliant machines- planted and built to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it where it can’t disrupt the climate.
Well, science actually suggests that the future probably needs a bit of both of these visions. You see, while reducing emissions and living more sustainably is essential, it’s no longer enough. To keep global heating below 1.5°C, we also need to remove some of the carbon we’ve already released into the atmosphere.
This process is called Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), and it’s crucial for mitigating climate change. It might not be something you’ve seen put into action yet, but it is becoming an increasingly important part of tackling the climate crisis.
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is a big part of tackling the climate crisis and is needed in order to meet climate targets. For example, the 192 countries that signed the Paris Agreement in 2015 must use CDR if they are to meet the 1.5°C warming limit. Therefore, things like cutting greenhouse gas emissions and shifting to clean energy help stop the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increasing, but they don’t deal with the problem of how much carbon dioxide is already there. CDR tackles this- from replanting forests to sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere using machines, it helps slow down global warming. It’s a bit like fixing a leak in a boat to stop water coming in (reducing carbon emissions), but still needing to bail out the water already in the boat (carbon dioxide removal).
Who bears the burden?
However, a real problem with Carbon Dioxide Removal is how much each country should be responsible for capturing. You see, if you were to assign carbon capture targets equally across all countries, some countries would end up with a higher level of CDR than they have the economy to support, physical land to accommodate, and the historical responsibility to tackle. This is where equitable Carbon Dioxide Removal targets come in, by splitting up the world’s total CDR target into amounts that are considered fair for each country.
But how do we decide what a fair CDR target is?
Scientists from around the world have researched this. In their research, they gave 170 countries CDR targets up to 2050 based on six principles of equity. They made allocations that respect the countries’ vegetation and underground space available for carbon storage, while also considering the country’s ability to pay for CDR, the population size and their historical contributions to climate change.
For example, the UK has released around 79.7 BILLION tonnes of carbon dioxide but Uganda,1 the country with the closest size to the UK,2 has only released 120 million.3 Consequently, it wouldn’t be fair to expect them to have equal CDR targets despite their similar land mass.
Equally, if targets are based around historical emissions, countries like the UK would have a high target because of how much it has historically contributed to carbon dioxide levels. However, having the space to plant large enough forests or store removed carbon to meet the targets can be impossible for smaller countries. Of the 170 countries involved in the study, they found that 25 countries don’t have enough land to take on a ‘fair’ share, and 71 of them don’t have enough empty space underground or under the sea to store their allotted carbon share.
One solution is that countries with lots of spare space and low storage costs, like Russia, Australia and Brazil, can take on extra CDR storage after meeting their own targets. This also creates a potential carbon credit market, with some countries paying others to take on some of their share of the CDR target.
However, there are also other factors to consider, such as increasing CDR targets due to economy growth, and the development of new technologies which could allow some countries to use empty gas and oil fields as undersea carbon storage.
Although, scientists conducting this research emphasised that CDR does not replace the importance of reducing carbon emissions. In fact, in order to keep to the 1.5°C warming limit, reductions of greenhouse gas emissions need to be at least 8 times higher than the target amount of carbon removed from the atmosphere. Therefore, we must work together to address this issue from both angles!
How to find Another Way
To make real progress, countries need to act now. The researchers recommend that nations form regional alliances to divvy up CDR responsibilities more fairly, based on shared resources and challenges. But, while international cooperation is key, individuals can also play a role in making carbon removal and climate action a part of everyday life.
You can start by looking at your own carbon footprint and what changes you could make to decrease you’re impact on the environment. For example, buying more local produce instead of food that is imported from other countries. Using public transport or walking/cycling where possible. Embracing a plant-based diet or using less plastic! Alternatively, you could get involved and volunteer on some of the natural carbon removal schemes, such as reforestation, land regeneration or rewilding.
However, if you feel like you want to take it one step further and hold governments and businesses accountable for their contribution to the issue, you could write to your MP or support a charity or organisation that is already working on this! There is a whole community of people out there working to push governments into making the right decisions for the environment; you just need to find them!
Article written by Kalin Pugh
Primary paper:
Yang, P., Mi, Z., Wei, Y.-M., Hanssen, S.V., Liu, L.-C., Coffman, D., Sun, X., Liao, H., Yao, Y.-F., Kang, J.-N., Wang, P.-T. and Davis, S.J. (2023). The global mismatch between equitable carbon dioxide removal liability and capacity. National Science Review, [online] 10(12). doi:https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwad254. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38021166/
Other references:
- Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado, and Max Roser (2023) – “CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions”. Data adapted from Global Carbon Project. Retrieved from: https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20250716-155402/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions.html [online resource] (archived on July 16, 2025) Accessed: 17th July 2025
- United Nations Statistics Division (2022) Demographic Yearbook (73rd edition) [online] Available at: https://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic-social/products/dyb/dyb_2022/ Accessed: 17th July 2025.
- Hannah Ritchie, Max Roser, and Pablo Rosado (2020) – “CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions”. Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions [Online Resource] Accessed: 17th July 2025
