Finding common ground: accounting for emissions from land at the UN climate talks

When we think about tackling climate change, our minds may ordinarily turn to energy production and transport. But the earth beneath our feet, the land itself, is one of the biggest factors in determining how many emissions reach the atmosphere, and indeed how many are removed.

That’s why it’s crucial the any new agreement coming out of the UN climate negotiations in Paris right now contains robust and transparent rules on emissions from the land in the treaty that’s arrived at.

This also matters because forests, peatlands and other parts of the land are the places where wildlife is, or at least should be. In many cases, the way they are managed can simultaneously benefit both wildlife and the climate.

International agreement has been reached on 2C being the safe limit for a rise in the global temperature. Yet to stay below that 2C threshold, global emissions need to go to zero, or nearly so, well before the end of the century. If you add up the emissions from agriculture, forests and other land use, they come to 24%, practically a quarter of all human-induced emissions. It is all too clear that we will not stay below the internationally agreed limit on global temperature rise unless we drastically cut emissions from land use.

Forests, peatlands and grasslands, habitats that are all important for nature, are also vitally important carbon sinks, drawing carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it. This gives us another reason for conserving them. Habitats such as these, as well as the oceans, are the only two ways we have right now of removing carbon from the atmosphere once it’s already there. So, we’re hopeful that negotiators working on the new treaty right now will make sure land use is in there and that the principles for dealing with emissions from it are strong and transparent.

But land is a sensitive issue because it covers so many topics, including land rights and biodiversity, among others. In general, emissions from land use in high-income countries are dominated by deforestation and forest degradation. But the main driver of deforestation is food production, primarily beef and soy in South America.  It demonstrates just how important agriculture is to the climate change debate.

This is by no means a simple issue to address. It is especially sensitive in developing countries where agriculture is central to the livelihoods of millions of people. Producing food whilst reducing total emissions will be a major challenge. To avoid getting bogged down, the Paris agreement will focus on two main areas: reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries (REDD+), and how to include land use emissions and removals (taking carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it) in targets, so-called accounting rules.

REDD+ enjoys almost universal support and is likely to be embedded in the treaty, although difficulties remain. There is too little money available to finance it globally and many countries lack the expertise, or even the governance, to implement it nationally.

Land use accounting rules are more contentious. Originally developed for the Kyoto Protocol in 2005, they have long been a source of frustration for environmental NGOs. Developed countries have been gifted the right to pick and choose what they account for, and how they account for it. This means they’ve ended up picking systems that best suit them, and often end up with credits, but no debits, on their carbon accounts.

Two years ago, the RSPB and BirdLife International, alongside hundreds of other NGOs, began to push for a set of principles in the Paris treaty that would define how future rules should be set, accounting for what actually goes into and out of the atmosphere.

Slightly to our surprise, this bid worked and we have some powerful allies, notably the USA. Broadly, we are calling for more comprehensive and consistent rules for accounting for emissions from land use, in particular the use of common base years or periods against which countries should account.

Given how central land use is to greenhouse gas emissions and associated climate change, making sure that it is fully accounted for in the treaty will be a key test of how pleased we are with what comes out of Paris this weekend.