Climate change mitigation through agricultural techniques: Policy recommendations
AGRICULTURAL TECHNIQUES FOR MITIGATION Promoting mitigation practices for climate change mitigation at farm level Policy measures for agricultural climate change mitigation need to be tailored to regional circumstances. The PICCMAT project selected practices provide a menu of measures with detailed information on their mitigation potential, cost and feasibility of implementation, co-benefits and trade-offs, and their compatibility with adaptation to climate change. From this list, measures can be chosen and combined according to regional needs and opportunities. PRIORITIES FOR POLICY ACTION Supporting climate change mitigation as part of a strategic and integrated approach to sustainable agriculture Climate change mitigation in agriculture should be pursued as part of an integrated approach to sustainable agriculture in order to build synergies and avoid conflicts between climate change mitigation and other policy objectives, and to avoid offsetting mitigation efforts through intensification of production or land use change. Strategic integrated rural land use programmes could be established at EU, national and/or regional level. They should overlay water, biodiversity and climate change objectives, and integrate mitigation and adaptation concerns. As a starting point, a “climate-checking” of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) instruments may be carried out to assess whether they support or hamper climate change mitigation, and determine how they could be improved in this context. Protecting existing carbon stocks The preservation of existing carbon stocks needs to be set as a mitigation priority. The protection of soils that are rich in organic carbon, for instance wetlands, peatlands and certain grasslands, would bring great benefits for mitigation. Significant emission reduction could be obtained if drained peatlands currently used for agriculture were rewetted and restored. A combination of regulation and financial compensation is needed to ensure effective protection of important carbon stocks in soils. Compulsory regulation can include bans on the conversion of intact peatlands or wetland areas with high soil carbon, and requirements to rewet drained peatlands and use them in a way that minimises carbon loss. Financial compensation can be offered to farmers to offset potential loss of income, and to ensure that individual farms or specific regions with a high proportion of land with such soils are not placed at a disadvantage. Reducing peat extraction for energy use and for horticultural and agricultural purposes would also contribute to emission reductions. In order to ensure policy coherence, peat should not be allocated the status of renewable energy under the revised EU Directive on renewable energy. EU ENVIRONMENTAL DIRECTIVES Ensuring the implementation of existing policies and strengthening protection standards Several policy instruments already exist at EU level that control the environmental impacts of agriculture and, usually as a side-effect, influence the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) from agriculture. When developing strategies for agricultural mitigation, these existing policies, in particular the Habitats and the Nitrate Directives, should be taken into account in order to ensure policy coherence, avoid contradicting policy messages and doubling of efforts. • Where there are still insufficiencies in the implementation of existing policies, the first step should be to improve implementation. • Moreover, the mitigation objective could be a driver for stricter standards (e.g. for fertiliser use under the Nitrate Directive). CROSS COMPLIANCE: LINKING AGRICULTURAL SUBSIDIES TO ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES Improving GAEC implementation, strengthening the protection of permanent grassland, and including mitigation objective in future baseline standards Improving the implementation and enforcement of existing Good agricultural and environmental condition (GAEC) standards for soil protection would help to exploit their potential to support mitigation. More targeted provisions to maintain permanent pasture that include site-specific bans on the conversion of grassland in particular on carbon-rich soils should be considered. In the current period (2007 – 2013), cross compliance provides limited scope to further address agricultural mitigation. However, cross compliance might develop into the environmental baseline of a future European agricultural or rural land use policy. It will then be important to include climate change mitigation as an explicit requirement of baseline standards, in order to ensure that mitigation occurs not only as a side-effect but that the measures also target emission reductions. STRENGTHENING RURAL DEVELOPMENT POLICY Increasing resources for rural development to support mitigation Increased funding is needed for rural development measures that support agricultural practices with multiple environmental benefits, including GHG mitigation. Additional funding can also be targeted specifically at pilot mitigation projects that test innovative approaches to maximize GHG mitigation as part of an integrated approach to sustainable agriculture. Integrating mitigation practices in rural development measures A climate screening of rural development measures (in particular of agri-environment measures) can provide a first step to better integrate mitigation objectives. Taking into account regional differences in mitigation potential and cost-effectiveness, agri-environment measures can be re-designed, or new measures can be introduced, to strengthen mitigation practices and support associated technical investments. The Commission could ask Member States to justify how the additional funding obtained from modulation is allocated, including for GHG mitigation purposes. Organic farming should be further promoted in rural development policies, and appropriate funding should be ensured. Climate change mitigation should be set as a specific target in Art. 3 “Objectives and principles for organic production” of the Council Regulation (EC) No 834/2007. Further measures might be inserted into existing production standards (e.g. minimum tillage, improved manure storage and application techniques in organic farming) to strengthen the climate mitigation benefit of organic farming. Monitoring systems may have to be expanded. Building knowledge and capacity for mitigation Rural development funding can be used to increase knowledge and capacity for mitigation through agricultural techniques. Pilot mitigation projects can test different approaches (e.g. carbon offsets, results-oriented versus management prescription approaches, methods for measuring on-farm carbon balance; see below). Technical guidelines can be drafted on the basis of pilot project results. Through rural development funds, additional support should be provided for awareness raising and capacity building related to climate change for farmers and farm advisors. Integrated farm plans can provide an innovative delivery instrument to achieve multiple environmental objectives, including climate change mitigation. FUTURE COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY (CAP) Re-designing the CAP into an integrated land use policy When implementing major CAP reforms, climate change mitigation needs to be a major consideration in designing the system. A system that merges the current cross compliance and rural development instruments can provide an opportunity to implement baseline measures and set more targeted incentives for more ambitious mitigation efforts. Future CAP reforms will provide the opportunity to introduce more targeted action to support soil carbon management and maintain existing carbon sinks and carbon-rich soils. The concept of Ecological Priority Areas should be considered to protect soils with high carbon content (e.g. peatlands) or for general carbon sequestration purposes. The economic vulnerability of small farms and farms in marginal areas should be considered, compensatory measures may be required. ECONOMIC INSTRUMENTS Exploring results-oriented approaches in pilot studies Results-oriented approaches that reward farmers for achieving specific mitigation targets can be explored for their effectiveness and controllability, especially with regard to the maintenance of existing carbon stocks (peatlands and permanent grasslands). A results-oriented approach could also be used to address farm nitrogen surpluses. Pilot studies could test the feasibility of results-oriented approaches. Results-oriented approaches could provide a methodological basis for carbon offsetting schemes. Exploring benefits, costs and feasibility of carbon offsetting The available evidence suggests that emission trading for the whole agricultural sector in Europe is not a feasible policy option in the near- to mid-term future. Instead, the possibility of using voluntary project-based trading of carbon offsets in an EU context should be explored. Pilot-projects could provide a basis to assess the feasibility of such a scheme, develop accounting and monitoring methodologies, and assess the benefits (for mitigation) and costs (for farmers and administration) it would entail. Considering taxes as an element of national integrated strategies for sustainable agriculture Member States might consider taxes on nitrogen as an instrument to be used in national integrated strategies for sustainable agriculture and exploit their potential to reduce nitrogen loss, with benefits for water protection and N2O emissions. Taxes are likely to be more effective if applied directly to environmental bads (e.g. nitrogen surplus) rather than on inputs (e.g. fertiliser). Careful design of taxing schemes is crucial to avoid adverse social effects. Recycling the revenues back to farmers, for instance in the form of agri-environment payments, may help to prevent income loss and reinforce environmental gains. SUPPORTING MITIGATION THROUGH BETTER INFORMATION Developing and promoting monitoring tools for farm sustainability Monitoring tools for farm-level sustainability such as the Flemish MOTIFS or the French IDEA systems might be further developed, and the potential for using them across Europe could be explored. Monitoring tools should take account of the farm’s greenhouse gas emissions. Addressing consumption habits – promoting carbon labelling Climate-friendly farming can improve the greenhouse gas balance of farming. However, to address the climate impact of food production more generally, consumption patterns have to change. In addition to information and awareness raising campaigns, product labels indicating the climate and environmental impacts of products can help to enable more climate-friendly consumer choices. Integration of the climate mitigation aspect into existing labelling and certification systems could be a way to avoid the overburdening of products with many different labels, and to make sure that different environmental issues are taken into account. Organic farming standards and monitoring systems could provide a basis for the development of a label indicating an environmentally-friendly food-production. Promoting exchange of experience between Member States An exchange on national policies and programmes for climate-friendly agriculture could be organised at EU level, for instance through a pan-European survey in combination with a conference for national policy-makers. The rural development networks established under rural development programming can offer a medium for this exchange. Developing measuring and accounting approaches for agricultural greenhouse gas emissions Indicators or indicator systems can be developed that could be used across Europe, based on proxies for agricultural GHG emissions such as farm level nitrogen and carbon balances. These can be based on existing indicators such as those provided by the EEA. The use of soil organic carbon maps could help to better target policies for mitigation. Remote sensing can be used for verifying the maintenance of carbon-rich ecosystems such as wetlands.
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Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, United Kingdom