Also discussed here: New study sets climate target for agriculture (IIASA News, May 17, 2016)
Today we review an assessment of approaches voluntarily proposed by 119 nations as Nationally Determined Contributions for COP21 in Paris to mitigate non CO2 emissions from the agricultural sector. Currently available approaches would deliver as little as 21% of the mitigation required to meet the 2 Deg C goal by 2030. The authors call for a range of innovative methods including carbon pricing, sequestering soil carbon and shifting dietary patterns and breeding cattle to produce less methane. Although agriculture is rural, some cities such as Ottawa, Canada contain more farmland (40% of rural area or 300,000 acres) and so must face up to the challenges in reducing greenhouse gases in this sector, as well as in transportation and the heating and cooling of buildings- and make this part of urban climate action plans.
Key Quotes:
“Agriculture (not including land use change) contributes an average of 35% of emissions in developing countries and 12% in developed countries today.”
“the agricultural sector must reduce non-CO2 emissions by 1 billion metric tons per year in 2030, a 17% reduction compared to the reference level projections of about 5.8 GtCO2eq…currently available interventions would only deliver between 21-40% of mitigation required as follows:
- Sustainable intensification of cattle
- Efficient use of water through alternate wetting and drying in irrigated rice
- Nutrient management for annual crops, including efficient use of nitrogen and manure
- Relocating production to increase input efficiency”
“international trade can bring a big potential for mitigation, by helping to encourage more production in the most efficient regions. However, without global targets for emissions reductions, decentralized approaches to climate mitigation could lead to inadequate pressure to decrease emissions from highly inefficient system such as those in Europe or North America”
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