This discussion paper on “land footprint scenarios” prepared by SERI for Friends of the Earth Europe aims to contribute knowledge on how consumption changes undertaken by individuals (such as changes towards
diets with lower amounts of meat consumption) or triggered by policies (such as EU’s renewable energy targets) impact on Europe’s global land footprint. After a short introduction to the concept of the land footprint, the discussion paper provides an extended review of the state in the academic literature on land requirements and land footprint related to consumption patterns, including relevant research on driving factors for land footprints, land footprints on the micro level of single products, as well as on the macro level of policies and countries. The second major chapter of the report summarises the results from simple scenario calculations, estimating the impacts on land footprints of future changes to key variables determining Europe’s land footprint. The land footprint, or actual land demand, is a well-recognised method to assess the total domestic and foreign land required to satisfy the final consumption of goods and services of a country (Bruckner, 2012). It is thus a powerful method to illustrate the dependency of countries or world regions on foreign land, which is embodied in imports and exports (also called “virtual land”).