Following B+LNZ Chair Kate Acland’s trip to Europe earlier this year, we’ve continued to work on building international consensus for the need to follow a split-gas approach when reporting GHGs from agriculture.
The need for a united position from agricultural producing nations on climate change metrics and emissions targets was a major subject of conversation during Acland’s visit to Ireland, the UK and US in May.
B+LNZ has been leading the charge on calling for governments and parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to follow scientific best practice and take a split-gas approach when reporting long-lived and short-lived greenhouse gases (GHGs) for their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
Amplifying this call in partnership with our international counterparts is more likely to get cut-through.
It’s vital that a split-gas approach is taken in reporting. Using the single GWP100 metric to bundle emissions doesn’t account for the different warming impacts between short- and long-lived gases, and means it’s unclear what amount of short-lived and long-lived gas emissions countries are planning to make.
The use of GWP100 is particularly concerning in the New Zealand setting where methane emissions are reducing. This is because GWP100, which works well when measuring the impact of long-lived GHG gases like carbon dioxide, is inaccurate in measuring the warming impact of short-lived gases such as methane, particularly when methane is reducing.
New Zealand already has split gas domestic targets and B+LNZ has long advocated for this world-leading, science-based approach to be replicated at an international level. This would highlight where emission reductions are expected and in the case of methane, in what sector.
The Paris Agreement on climate change specifically references the importance of maintaining food production and safeguarding food security. We think having a split gas approach based on warming impact of the gases reflects the intent of this.
Many overseas jurisdictions in making their international and domestic commitments specifically acknowledge the important role of food production and want to use technology and improved farming practices to achieve emissions reduction goals, instead of reducing production or overall animal numbers.
Read more about the discussions during Acland’s May trip here.
Work since then
We have continued to work with our international counterparts on developing our united position.
We have also had a range of meetings with Ministers, politicians and officials on this issue.
Upcoming work
The split-gas approach to methane is or will be a major focus at a series of major international meetings B+LNZ is involved with.
The Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (which B+LNZ is on the Board of) has been meeting this week in Canada, and the World Meat Congress is in Brazil in October. The UN Climate Change Conference COP30 will then follow in Brazil in November.
Work to formalise the international united position – we’re aiming for a joint statement from a wide range of international agricultural organisation partners – is progressing well and we’ll release this to farmers and provide further updates soon.
Further background
B+LNZ has been calling for the use of better metrics and for New Zealand to start reporting on the warming impact of various gases since the passage of the Zero Carbon Bill in 2019 – for more information on what we’ve done, see this page on our website.
In parallel, we continue to advocate domestically for New Zealand’s targets to be revised based on no additional warming and for the pricing of agricultural emissions to be taken off the table.