In 2007, agricultural emissions accounted for more than 48%
of New Zealand’s total greenhouse gas emissions (Ministry for the
Environment, 2009)
and 13.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC, 2007c). The question of what
response will effectively address these emissions is of critical importance to
New Zealand and the world. However, ensuring that our response is effective
requires us to first ask a different question: why do individuals, communities,
companies and government in New Zealand care about agricultural emissions? A
recent Motu note by Hugh McDonald and Suzi Kerr responds to this fundamental
inquiry; it can be found online
here. Its major conclusions are summarised below.
There are three non-mutually exclusive reasons New
Zealanders may want to control agricultural emissions. We may be concerned
about the impacts of climate change on New Zealand and the world. We might be
motivated to control greenhouse gas emissions due to international pressure and
opportunities from others based on their concern about climate change. This
international pressure could be felt from two distinct sources: from
international organisations and countries, or alternatively, in the form of
commercial pressures and opportunities for domestic producers. A third
motivation may be that we are interested in complementary goals that can be
achieved by targeting agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, such as improving
water quality or improving farm efficiency.
The motivations New Zealanders have for addressing agricultural
emissions should determine the way that the emissions are addressed; that is,
the why should determine the how. Depending on our motivation, we will require
our responses to achieve different levels of verifiability or visibility, will
have different priorities for technological change, and will focus more or less
on communicating internationally. These dimensions are summarised in Table 1.
Table 1: Choosing appropriate
responses given our motivations
|
Responses
|
|
Visible/Verifiable:
|
Technology change:
|
External outreach:
|
Motivation
One:
Avoid climate change
|
Needs to be visible and/or verifiable to the farmer.
Needs to be verifiable and visible to New Zealand regulators (if
national policy).
Effort needs to be visible internationally to encourage others.
|
Mitigation technologies.
Some measurement and monitoring technologies.
|
Cooperate on mitigation development.
Share technologies and knowledge we develop.
Actively disseminate knowledge.
|
Motivation
Two:
Meet international pressure
· From countries or
international organisations
|
Must be verifiable by international organisations.
|
Verifiable mitigation methods.
|
Demonstrate to international parties that we are meeting commitments.
|
· From international consumers/markets
|
Must be visible to consumers.
|
Visible mitigation methods.
Marketing technologies.
|
Show effort that is convincing to international consumers.
|
Motivation Three:
Achieve complementary goals
|
Effect on complementary goals needs to be visible to communities of
interest.
|
Technologies that positively affect
our complementary goals.
|
None unless community of interest is international, e.g. Biodiversity.
|
When responding to
agricultural emissions we also need to ensure that our response is robust to
the many different possible futures. While we can control and influence some
factors around this issue of agricultural emissions, we have little or no
control over other factors , such as the seriousness of the climate problem in
the future, the existence and stringency of any binding global agreement, the
development of technologies for cheap and effective mitigation, and the global
economy and agricultural prices. These will have a large influence on the
actual outcome of any agricultural emissions response we make. We need to
ensure that whatever responses we choose to make are robust to these many
uncertainties; that is, our response will need to be flexible, scalable, effective
and low cost.
Our discussion also suggests a few stronger
conclusions. If we believe that New Zealand is likely to face a price on carbon
emissions in the future, explicit or otherwise, then when making decisions with
long-term consequences New Zealanders should focus on responses that will
decrease long term global agricultural greenhouse gas emissions while improving
global food security. These responses will be characterised by significant
international engagement and co-operation, and a focus on mitigation technology
development. We will want to develop effective, efficient, socially acceptable
ways to control agricultural greenhouse gas emissions so that other countries will
emulate us. The key characteristic of
these responses will be integrity; successful responses will focus on long-term
global goals, rather than attempting to appeal to international consumers or
regulators in the short term.
A second conclusion
is also clear: there is an opportunity to broaden the consensus for addressing
agricultural emissions by focussing on outcomes other than climate change. New
Zealanders are motivated to take actions that will affect agricultural
emissions for a wide range of reasons, and not only because they personally
care about helping New Zealand meet international emissions commitments or
reducing the risk of climate change. For example, many New Zealanders will be
more motivated to act to improve local water quality or agricultural
profitability. Given that issues such as these can be addressed in a way that
will have complementary effects on greenhouse gas emissions, focussing on these
issues may be a more effective way to build consensus for action than focussing
exclusively on climate change.
The full paper can be found on the Motu website -
click here.
