High bar set for farming with new Climate Action Plan

The Climate Action Plan that was published by Minister Eamon Ryan is very different in key respects to the one published just two years ago by Deputy Richard Bruton.

The 51% target cut in emissions is not news, but there are a few important differences that affect agriculture in particular.

What’s relatively new though, is that there is now a separate land-use emissions category, or LUE, which has its own target reduction for 2030.

There is also a key change in the relationship between land use emissions and agricultural activity emissions (AAE).

Up to now removals could be offset against the emissions produced by agricultural activity. The current Climate Plan no longer permits this. Each category of emissions, LUE and AAE, faces ring-fenced targets. AAE must decline by between 20% and 30% by 2030. But LUE will have to decline by 51% by 2030.

The inability to offset positive emissions with negative emissions through land use is a material change in the obligations being imposed on the sector. This change was in part precipitated by the Fit for 55 initiative of the EU. But, crucially, this inability to offset AAE was signalled by the EU to kick in from 2026.

No incentives

The Government’s Climate Action Plan has now enshrined the advice from the Climate Change Advisory Council to initiate this change from 2021. One adverse consequence of this change is that it removes any incentive for farmers collectively to implement changes in land use in order to offset emissions arising from agricultural activity.

On the plus side, by ring-fencing the two categories of emissions, LUE and AAE, any shortfall in achieving the former target won’t have to be made up by greater emission reductions in the latter.

Land-use change can be viewed as encompassing ‘nature based solutions’, or NBS, to climate change.

This is one of the buzz phrases at COP26. Farmers, I think, are instinctively aware of NBS, even though they are very unlikely to use the phrase itself.

Land use changes can limit the growth in future emissions while also acting as a sink for carbon. At the same time, doing so can enhance water quality and biodiversity and prevent flood damage. But these solutions cannot be at the expense of farmer livelihoods.

Land use emissions and removals

Establishing emissions and removals from different land uses is not a precise science.

We have fairly good information on forests but less so for wetlands, grasslands and crop lands. The National Soil Carbon Observatory, which is a key component of the SignPost Programme, should help firm up the estimates on grass and croplands.

The climate council indicated an overall level of LUE in 2018 of 4.8m tonne CO2 equivalent. This was made up of a forest sink of 4.8m tonne CO2 equivalent and gross emissions from the other land uses of 9.6m tonne CO2 equivalent. The Climate Plan proposes a cut in net emissions of 51% by 2030, from 4.8m to 2.5m tonne CO2 equivalent. Agriculture will have to bear a substantial burden in achieving this target.

Ambitious targets

The target is a hugely ambitious because it’s projected that by 2030, in the absence of policy change, particularly concerning national afforestation, net emissions could grow to over 7m tonne CO2 equivalent.

To achieve the targeted cut will require a massive turnaround in afforestation and a significant re-wetting of agricultural lands that were previously peatlands. The Government's plan sets a target rewetting of 80,000ha. This is highly ambitious when set against the 40,000ha identified in the Teagasc Marginal Abatement Cost Curves (MACC).

The big difference between the targets set for land use and agricultural activity emissions is that, so far at any rate, the achievement of the targets in LUE will depend on the voluntary responses of land owners, whether it be in the planting of forests, woodlands and hedgerows or the rewetting of wetlands.

With AAE on the other hand, instruments, such as, the Nitrates Action Programme and the proposed Fertililser Register, can engineer compliance.

Targets vs achievement

The setting of targets is the easy part. Planting rates have fallen year by year and now stand at a low of 2,500ha, when 20,000ha will be needed by 2028.

One aspect of forestry policy that urgently needs attention in my view is the requirement to plant in perpetuity. This requirement economically disadvantages a potential forestry investor because it drastically reduces the option value on the land following felling.

As a small scale forest owner, I can testify to the cost of this restriction. Rewetting of peatlands won’t happen either without significant compensation for farmers and a substantial investment in rehabilitation of these lands as carbon sinks.

Finance

The route to realising these highly ambitious targets is the mobilisation of the necessary finance. Throughout last week at the COP26, it was repeatedly stated that while nature-based solutions provide 30% or more of the potential solutions, they have only mobilised at most 3% of the finance. And finance doesn’t have to come from the public sector. Creativity is now required to identify smart financial solutions that will involve public-private partnerships to create market-based incentives. Without such incentives and investment, I can’t see these targets being achieved.

Professor Gerry Boyle is the former Director of Teagasc and former member of the Climate Change Advisory Council.