The FAOSTAT database of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture

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Managing the Risk of Stranded Assets in Agriculture and Forestry

To date, much of the research into stranded assets – broadly defined as assets incurring significant unanticipated or premature write-downs or devaluations – has focused on the fossil fuel sector. However, not least in the context of the 2015 Paris Agreement, and with growing understanding that climate change may become a major factor in the creation of stranded assets, it has become clear that it is not just the energy sector that will be affected. Assets in agriculture and forestry may also be at risk of stranding, because of physical impacts such as drought and desertification as well as through regulatory and technological change.The risk of stranding is particularly high in production regions where natural forests are being cleared for agricultural use. Other regions at high risk are those where climate change is predicted to have impacts that will severely disrupt production cycles or shift production patterns. In addition, strong low-carbon development plans can affect the regulatory frameworks that govern the agriculture and forestry sectors, bringing further risks of stranding.Stranding risks have a potential impact on the various actors positioned along the supply chain for agriculture and forest commodities. They include the land- or rights-owners, the owners of infrastructure related to the transport and processing of commodities, consumer companies and investors.The faster the pace of decarbonization, or the more pronounced the impacts of climate change, the greater the chance of asset stranding and the higher the likelihood of economic, social and political impacts. The prospect of asset stranding could be sufficient to cause potentially affected groups to impede efforts towards low-carbon development, but this possibility has not been sufficiently accounted for in the national low-carbon development plans of either developed or developing economies. As a result, there is a potential risk to the implementation of such plans.This paper includes case studies of stranding risk in Brazil, Malaysia and Liberia. In these countries, there are potentially significant risks of stranding, both from regulation and climate change impacts. However, there has been very little consideration of these risks by policymakers, and there are significant information gaps.Further research is necessary in the following areas: analysing the outlook for biofuels to assess the risk of stranding and the possible impacts of new technology; assessing the physical impacts of extreme weather events on investments, taking into account the role of the insurance industry and price fluctuations; and determining whether growing consumer preferences for 'sustainable' products contribute to the risk of stranding in agriculture and forestry.Such research could be used to initiate discussions within producer countries about the risk of stranded assets given their national strategies and policies, and in light of the available evidence of the physical impacts of climate change, in order to identify the options for both mitigating and managing that risk

Media coverage of climate change mitigation in the spanish press

This article analyzes how the Spanish press covers the mitigation of climate change. We have used the search engine MyNews to study in El País and El Mundo, the newspapers with the largest circulation in Spain during the years 2016 and 2017, the news that includes the words "mitigacion" o "reducción de emisiones", y "cambio climatico” o “calentamiento global" in the most circulation newspapers in Spain in 2016 and 2017: El País and El Mundo. To explain how mitigation is covered by the Spanish press, we have used a series of categories and variables. As a result, we find an important difference between the urgency expressed by the scientific community and the reduced presence of this topic in the Spanish press

Chapter 11 - Agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU)

Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) plays a central role for food security and sustainable development. Plants take up carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and nitrogen (N) from the soil when they grow, re-distributing it among different pools, including above and below-ground living biomass, dead residues, and soil organic matter. The CO2 and other non-CO2 greenhouse gases (GHG), largely methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), are in turn released to the atmosphere by plant respiration, by decomposition of dead plant biomass and soil organic matter, and by combustion. Anthropogenic land-use activities (e.g., management of croplands, forests, grasslands, wetlands), and changes in land use / cover (e.g., conversion of forest lands and grasslands to cropland and pasture, afforestation) cause changes superimposed on these natural fluxes. AFOLU activities lead to both sources of CO2 (e.g., deforestation, peatland drainage) and sinks of CO2 (e.g., afforestation, management for soil carbon sequestration), and to non-CO2 emissions primarily from agriculture (e.g., CH4 from livestock and rice cultivation, N2O from manure storage and agricultural soils and biomass burning. The main mitigation options within AFOLU involve one or more of three strategies: reduction / prevention of emissions to the atmosphere by conserving existing carbon pools in soils or vegetation that would otherwise be lost or by reducing emissions of CH4 and N2O; sequestration - enhancing the uptake of carbon in terrestrial reservoirs, and thereby removing CO2 from the atmosphere; and reducing CO2 emissions by substitution of biological products for fossil fuels or energy-intensive products. Demand-side options (e.g., by lifestyle changes, reducing losses and wastes of food, changes in human diet, changes in wood consumption), though known to be difficult to implement, may also play a role. Land is the critical resource for the AFOLU sector and it provides food and fodder to feed the Earth's population of ~7 billion, and fibre and fuel for a variety of purposes. It provides livelihoods for billions of people worldwide. It is finite and provides a multitude of goods and ecosystem services that are fundamental to human well-being. Human economies and quality of life are directly dependent on the services and the resources provided by land. Figure 11.1 shows the many provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting services provided by land, of which climate regulation is just one. Implementing mitigation options in the AFOLU sector may potentially affect other services provided by land in positive or negative ways. In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Second Assessment Report (SAR) and in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), agricultural and forestry mitigation were dealt with in separate chapters. In the IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR), there were no separate sectoral chapters on either agriculture or forestry. In the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), for the first time, the vast majority of the terrestrial land surface, comprising agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU), is considered together in a single chapter, though settlements (which are important, with urban areas forecasted to triple in size from 2000 global extent by 2030), are dealt with in Chapter 12. This approach ensures that all land-based mitigation options can be considered together; it minimizes the risk of double counting or inconsistent treatment (e.g., different assumptions about available land) between different land categories, and allows the consideration of systemic feedbacks between mitigation options related to the land surface. Considering AFOLU in a single chapter allows phenomena common across land-use types, such as competition for land and water, co-benefits, adverse side-effects and interactions between mitigation and adaptation to be considered consistently. The complex nature of land presents a unique range of barriers and opportunities, and policies to promote mitigation in the AFOLU sector need to take account of this complexity. In this chapter, we consider the competing uses of land for mitigation and for providing other services. Unlike the chapters on agriculture and forestry in AR4, impacts of sourcing bioenergy from the AFOLU sector are considered explicitly in a dedicated appendix. Also new to this assessment is the explicit consideration of food / dietary demand-side options for GHG mitigation in the AFOLU sector, and some consideration of freshwater fisheries and aquaculture, which may compete with the agriculture and forestry sectors, mainly through their requirements for land and / or water, and indirectly, by providing fish and other products to the same markets as animal husbandry. This chapter deals with AFOLU in an integrated way with respect to the underlying scenario projections of population growth, economic growth, dietary change, land-use change (LUC), and cost of mitigation. We draw evidence from both "bottom-up" studies that estimate mitigation potentials at small scales or for individual options or technologies and then scale up, and multi-sectoral "top-down" studies that consider AFOLU as just one component of a total multi-sector system response. In this chapter, we provide updates on emissions trends and changes in drivers and pressures in the AFOLU sector, describe the practices available in the AFOLU sector, and provide refined estimates of mitigation costs and potentials for the AFOLU sector, by synthesising studies that have become available since AR4. We conclude the chapter by identifying gaps in knowledge and data, providing a selection of Frequently Asked Questions, and presenting an Appendix on bioenergy to update the IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN)

Food systems emission and climate change consequences

Food systems are responsible for up to one-third of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These emissions include carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) and are therefore a major driver of climate change. The environmental pressures on food systems are likely to intensify, as humanity is arguably already operating beyond planetary boundaries. The projection for changes between 2010 and 2050 shows that these pressures will result in an increase of between 80 and 92 percent in GHG emissions in the absence of technological change and other mitigation measures. Apart from being a significant source of GHG emissions, food systems are significantly impacted by climate change. Uneven climate change effects, in combination with differences in adaptation capacity, could exacerbate existing inequalities between High-Income (HI), Low-Income (LI) and Lower Middle-Income (LMI) countries

Risks of higher food prices on international markets

Agricultural commodity prices have increased since the early 2000s in response to a combination of causes on the demand side (demographic growth, increased animal product consumption in emerging countries and biofuel mandates) and on the supply side (the phasing out of agricultural policies subsidising food supply in the European Union and United States, lack of public investment in agriculture, reaching ceilings in cereal yields in already high-yield countries and an increase in energy prices). The succession of food crises between 2008 and 2012 has brought the agricultural price regime and its implications for food security back to the forefront. Even though the increase of average agricultural prices could profit some farmers, part of the price increase corresponds to increased costs and urban dwellers, as well as many food-insecure food producers, depend on the market for their supply. In addition, environmental policies concerning the protection of biodiversity, climate mitigation and pesticide reduction could make these issues even more acute

Guide to Developing Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land-Use (AFOLU) Carbon Market Projects under Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP)

This report outlines the general steps required for development of a carbon project intended for sale of carbon credits via a carbon offset program, whether compliance or voluntary. While there are differences among the numerous offset programs, the major components are generally the same and any carbon project originating in the agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) sector will follow these steps. This report was written as a guide to development of carbon projects for Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), but the same process outlined here is equally applicable to any AFOLU carbon project.This work was supported by the PSNP Climate Smart Initiative. The PSNP is implemented by the Government of Ethiopia with support from the following development partners: Canadian International Development Agency, Irish Aid, European Commission, Royal Netherlands Embassy, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, UK Department for International Development, United States Agency for International Development, World Food Program and World Bank

Agriculture and climate change: An agenda for negotiation in Copenhagen

Table of Contents: •Overview by Gerald C. Nelson •Agricultural Science and Technology Needs for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation by Rudy Rabbinge •Reducing Methane Emissions from Irrigated Rice by Reiner Wassmann, Yasukazu Hosen, and Kay Sumfleth •Direct and Indirect Mitigation Through Tree and Soil Management by Brent M. Swallow and Meine van Noordwijk •The Potential for Soil Carbon Sequestration by Rattan Lal •Mitigating Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Livestock Systems by M. Herrero and P. K. Thornton •The Role of Nutrient Management in Mitigation by Helen C. Flynn •Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification Methodologies for Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use by Sean Smukler and Cheryl Palm •Synergies Among Mitigation, Adaptation, and Sustainable Development by Pete Smith •The Importance of Property Rights in Climate Change Mitigation by Helen Markelova and Ruth Meinzen-Dick •The Important Role of Extension Systems by Kristin E. Davis •Adaptation to Climate Change: Household Impacts and Institutional Responses by Futoshi Yamauchi and Agnes Quisumbing •The Constructive Role of International Trade by Franz FischlerClimate change, Copenhagen, Science and technology, rice, Soil fertility management, Greenhouse gas, Nutrients, Forestry resources, Land use, Sustainable development, International trade, extension activities, Household behavior, Institutional Impacts,

Perspectives on subnational carbon and climate footprints: A case study of Southampton, UK

Sub-national governments are increasingly interested in local-level climate change management. Carbon- (CO2 and CH4) and climate-footprints—(Kyoto Basket GHGs) (effectively single impact category LCA metrics, for global warming potential) provide an opportunity to develop models to facilitate effective mitigation. Three approaches are available for the footprinting of sub-national communities. Territorial-based approaches, which focus on production emissions within the geo-political boundaries, are useful for highlighting local emission sources but do not reflect the transboundary nature of sub-national community infrastructures. Transboundary approaches, which extend territorial footprints through the inclusion of key cross boundary flows of materials and energy, are more representative of community structures and processes but there are concerns regarding comparability between studies. The third option, consumption-based, considers global GHG emissions that result from final consumption (households, governments, and investment). Using a case study of Southampton, UK, this chapter develops the data and methods required for a sub-national territorial, transboundary, and consumption-based carbon and climate footprints. The results and implication of each footprinting perspective are discussed in the context of emerging international standards. The study clearly shows that the carbon footprint (CO2 and CH4 only) offers a low-cost, low-data, universal metric of anthropogenic GHG emission and subsequent management