B+LNZ is leading the call for a united position from agricultural producing nations on climate change metrics and emissions targets. This was a major subject of conversation in Chair Kate Acland’s recent visit to Ireland, the UK and USA where she met with counterpart organisations to discuss this opportunity.
Here Kate provides more information.
B+LNZ is calling for governments and parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to follow best scientific practice and take a split-gas approach when reporting long-lived and short-lived greenhouse gases (GHG).
While UNFCCC guidelines require GHG inventories to be reported using GWP100, parties can also report their emissions without using any metrics and set their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) in almost any form they wish.
Uruguay has already demonstrated best scientific practice and set a split gas NDC. This means they have clearly stated what level of short-lived emissions reductions they want to achieve as compared to their long-lived gas emissions reductions. We believe New Zealand and other countries should follow this leadership.
Right now, many countries use a single metric to describe all of their emissions bundled into one. This means it is unclear what amount of short-lived gas and long-lived gas emissions reductions they are planning to make.
The standard metric used for measuring GHGs (GWP100) works well when measuring the warming impact of long-lived GHG gases such as nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide. However, it is inaccurate in measuring the warming impact of short-lived gases such as methane, particularly when methane is reducing as it is in New Zealand.
The scientific community has known about this problem for decades, but as climate action increases, GWP100's inability to accurately measure the impacts of methane emissions has gone from a quirk in metrics to a fundamental problem that is distorting GHG mitigation policies and hurting farmer buy-in toward climate action.
The science is clear – long-lived gases need to reach net zero to prevent additional warming, while short-lived gases like methane only need to be slightly reduced to have the same effect.
A split gas approach to setting targets for long-lived and short-lived GHG can avoid metrics needing to compare GHGs. Rather, net-zero long-lived GHG targets (necessary to halt climate change) can be accompanied by targets, which reduce short-lived GHG (but not to zero), consistent with stopping climate change.
We’re concerned in the New Zealand context that the current targets unfairly penalise our agricultural sector, forcing reductions in livestock numbers rather than addressing emissions from other sectors that predominantly emit long-lived gases like carbon dioxide.
Agriculture is the largest contributor to our export earnings and New Zealand producers are amongst the world’s most carbon efficient producers of protein. We should be celebrating and rewarding this.
The technology largely exists to reduce carbon emissions from sectors like transportation and manufacturing – these are arguably far easier to address than methane emitted from livestock. The Government should set targets that encourage the uptake of this technology, rather than relying on offsetting emissions at the expense of our highly efficient food producing sector.
Taking a split gas approach does not limit the ability for policymakers to be ambitious in addressing climate change.
Instead, it fosters evidenced-based discussions on relative and historic warming, potential for cooling, and fairness. We would like to have these discussions, but it’s difficult when the wrong metrics are being used.