Agricultural Emissions: Serious Traction For Global Research On Ag Emissions
September 30th, 2009
John Key and Climate Change Negotiations Minister Tim Groser are growing increasingly optimistic NZ’s initiative to create a global research consortium into agricultural greenhouse gas mitigation will bear fruit. Both Ministers gave the initiative a strong push in UN food security and climate change talks in New York last week, and Groser says heavy-hitters including the US, Brazil, India, and the Netherlands are showing strong interest, with France also indicating support.
Groser, whose aim is to position NZ for the climate change debate in the same way as it has for global trade negotiations says “when you have parties like that on board, you know you are cooking with gas.” As a First World country highly dependent on agricultural exports, NZ has been a bridge to the issues that affect developing economies, whose biggest trade and climate change issues are bound up with agricultural production.
Groser told NZ Energy & Environment Business Week “agriculture is our game. People understand that.” With 50% of its greenhouse gas emissions coming from agriculture, NZ is only unusual when compared with OECD countries. Its profile is much more like that of countries such as Brazil, where 54% of emissions are from agriculture. Groser says the key issue for developing countries is food security, and no climate deal will fly without acknowledging a 100% projected increase in food production by 2050, driven by rising population, means more GHG emissions as a result.
Describing NZ’s debate as “impoverished” for failing to recognise this reality, Groser says the research initiative will need to concentrate first on increasing agricultural productivity while either stabilising or lowering emissions. “Farmers won’t pick it up (new emissions mitigation technology) unless it’s at worst neutral, and they will really need the promise of an increase in productivity.” The underlying reality for NZ remains there are too few known answers to the country’s agricultural emissions. While nitrification inhibitors work in some parts of the country, they are not effective everywhere. Meanwhile, there is as yet no technology for dealing with methane emissions, which account for 32% of NZ’s total GHG emissions.
Copyright © Media Information Ltd
NZ Energy & Environment Business Week
Amalgamated Dairies