Kommission: Landwirte brauchen Unterstützung bei Reduzierung von Kohlenstoffemissionen [en]
Europäische Landwirte müssen landwirtschaftliche Treibhausgas-Emissionen um mindestens 20% bis 2020 kürzen, vor allem durch die Produktion von Biomasse und Speicherung von Kohlenstoff im Boden, ohne Hilfe von außen riskieren sie jedoch den Ruin, so EU-Agrarkommissarin Mariann Fischer Boel gestern (15. September).
Background
In an attempt to prepare the ground for a comprehensive post-2013 climate change adaptation strategy for the EU, the European Commission proposed in April 2009 to review key sectoral policies by 2012, determining the potential impacts and costs of climate change for different economic sectors.
An accompanying working document on agriculture states that the farming sector will suffer in the long-term unless sector-wide structural and technological changes are implemented by public authorities to complement autonomous adaptation measures by individual farms.
The document also acknowledges the sector's contribution to total emissions alongside its mitigation potential, and underlines the importance of developing synergies between the two.
European agriculture emissions have already fallen by 20% since 1990 due in part to there being fewer cattle and also to better technology and farm management.
But the heat is on to find other ways to reduce emissions, ahead of a major global climate summit in Copenhagen in December and to meet tough goals already set for the next decade.
Mariann Fischer Boel, the EU agriculture commissioner, said on Tuesday (15 September) that the farm sector should cut emissions of methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide.
"It [the sector] can do more to store carbon in farmland soils," she told European agriculture ministers at a meeting in southern Sweden, in a speech seen by journalists.
Farmers can also fight emissions by supplying more biomass to produce energy and renewable materials, she said.
Farmers need support through reformed CAP
However, Fischer Boel said farmers would need support to make the changes needed to reduce emissions.
"We can't just leave them to sink or swim: many of them would sink, with disastrous consequences for our food production base and our environment," she said.
Fischer Boel said Europe's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Health Check and Economic Recovery Package had helped set aside more money for farmers to fight climate change.
But she said Europe would "almost certainly" have to make changes to the CAP, mainly after 2013, to give farmers much-needed support to reduce emissions.
"We need to look very closely at giving stronger incentives for good soil management, especially for protecting carbon-rich soils, such as grasslands," she said.
Europe must strike the right balance between binding requirements and positive incentives, she added.
"It's not an option just to bury our farmers in rules."
(EurActiv with Reuters.)
Positions
The EU farmers' lobby, Copa and Cogeca, agrees that agriculture can have a positive role in tackling climate change but stresses that "a strong Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), with sufficient incentives, is vital" to make it happen.
Copa president Padraig Walshe highlighted some examples of how agriculture can both adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change. "If we can introduce new crops more resilient to water scarcity or wet conditions, we will, at the same time, contribute to reducing green house gas emissions through more efficient use of energy intensive inputs, such as fertilisers," he said.
EU agriculture can also "provide alternatives to fossil fuels and oil-derived products. It can sequester carbon in soils and biomass and can enhance the resilience of the ecosystem," Walshe added.
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has called for agriculture to be put at the centre of ongoing UN climate talks. Gerald Nelson, a senior research fellow at IFPRI, said that while the agricultural sector emits 14% of total greenhouse gas emissions, it also has a "unique role" in absorbing carbon emitted from other sectors.
Therefore, "any funds set aside in the UN talks to help adaptation need to include agriculture. We need to think about new crop varities, new physical infrastructure to make farming more resilient as well as new institutions both domestically and internationally that support resilience," Nelson argued.
According to the institute, agriculture can mitigate emissions through "changes in agricultural technologies and management practices," and new crop mixes that include more perennial plants or have deeper root systems. Such plants allow more carbon to be stored in the soil (EurActiv ).
Sponsors
Europeans challenge Europe