By Helen.
The environment correspondent.
The image is from the same source.
By the end of the century, a hundred billion tons of carbon dioxide could be removed from the air through re-wilding farmland.
The study estimated the carbon savings from turning the land into nature.
In rich nations, livestock accounting for the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions come from food and agriculture.
The animals need a lot of land to grow their food.
If wealthier countries moved away from meat-rich diet, there would be less land needed to grow food, and vast areas could be left to grow wild plants and trees.
The "double climate dividend" could be achieved by linking land, food, public health and climate policy.
"It's a double blow," said Dr Paul Behrens, who led the research.
Shifting diet can save a lot of emissions from avoiding emissions from animal-based agriculture, but we can also save large amounts of land which can be used to sequester carbon from the atmosphere.
The image is from the same source.
The image caption is.
About a third of the planet is occupied by livestock.
A shift to a diet with a bit of meat but a lot of veg would affect more than 50 high-income nations.
They estimate that the "planetary health diet" would reduce annual agricultural production emissions by almost two-thirds, while allowing former farmland to return to its natural state would remove 98.3% of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by the end of the century.
If the land was allowed to re-wild or re-forest, you could double the emissions that you save by following a plant-based diet.
Climate change and nature are interdependent and must be tackled together.
He said that it was important to have a joined-up picture of food policy and land policy and climate policy at the same time.
Nature Food has a study in it.
Under new government subsidies, farmers and land owners in England could be paid to turn large areas of land into nature reserves.
Greenhouse gas emissions.
Agriculture.
Climate change.
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