Background Paper

CLIMATE CHANGE AND SUSTAINABILITY

Note: The views expressed in this background paper do not purport to reflect the views of the Minister or the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Climate Change & Sustainability

Background Document

Climate ChangeSustainability

  1. Context
  2. Sectoral Goals
  3. Current sectoral analysis
  4. Specific actions
  5. Sustainability considerations
  6. Challenges up to 2025

Climate ChangeandSustainability

1.Context

This paper examines how Irish agriculture might evolve towards 2025, with a special emphasis on the sustainability of agriculture and food production.

In recent decades, global population growth, changes in food demand, conversion to modern, high-input agriculture, land use changes, and the globalisation of agricultural markets have greatly increased the pressures on our natural resources resulting in significant biodiversity loss and a reduction in water quality. Thus, producing additional food requirements whilst maintaining and restoring biodiversity and water quality to its highest potential and reducing net carbon emissions, must be a key goal for sustainable agriculture production systems.

The EU Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe prioritises water, clean air, ecosystem services, healthy soils and marine resources as key resources to be efficiently managed in a concerted effort to use the Earth’s limited resources in a sustainable manner. BothEU and National environmental priorities centre on achieving targets for: water quality, climate change, air quality and biodiversity. In broad terms, appropriate land management, livestock management and efficient nutrient management will be central to the delivering on these objectives.

In 2010, the Food Harvest 2020 report set out a vision for an Irish food and drink industry that was innovative, efficient, and a global leader in environmentally sustainable production. It envisaged a sector that could reap considerable rewards by working and acting ‘smartly’ so as to make the most productive use of Ireland’s rich natural ‘green’ resources in a way that is both economically viable and sustainable in the future.An ongoing commitment to and delivery on key environmental targets under relevant National and EU legislation and strategies, and with international commitments will be a critical success factor underlying Ireland’s sustainability credentials towards 2025.

2.Sectoral Goals

Food Harvest 2020 Targets

The Food Harvest 2020 Committee’s Report was published in July 2010andincludes a range of specific volume and value growth targets for the different elements of the Irish agricultural, forestry, bio-energy, fishing and food sectors. A key target within the report is to increase the value of primary output from the agriculture, fisheries and forestry sectors by €1.5 billion. This target was linked to a number of sustainability goalsincluding:

  • Reducing the carbon intensity of agricultural activities and enhancing carbon sinks;
  • Developing new green technologies that improve water quality;
  • Protecting biodiversity and achieving biodiversity targets;
  • Developing sustainable energy requirements;
  • Promoting sustainable pasture-based farming and soil management;
  • Continued investments in research to develop technologies and approaches required to make Ireland a world leader in science based sustainable agricultural and food production;
  • Ensuring environmentally sustainable production practices for seafood and aquaculture.

The potential impact of this increased production on the environment was considered to be slightlynegative overall in the Food Harvest Environmental Report[1] finalised in January 2014. Hence to achieve the aforementioned sustainability goals, significant investment is being targeted to address potential negative impacts through for example, research aimed at developing and refining best practices, investment through the RDP and the identification and confirmation of sustainability credentials for Irish agricultural production.

National, EU and International Policy drivers

Air Quality

In relation to air quality, Ireland is a party to the Convention on Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP) under which the Gothenburg Protocol sets out targets for the control of ammonia (NH3) emissions. Implementation of the Gothenburg protocol is achieved through limits set out in the National Emissions Ceilings Directive (NECD, 2001/81/EC).

In 2012, under a revised Gothenburg protocol, Ireland’s target for ammonia emissions is a 0.5% reduction on 2005 levels by 2020 which equates to a value of 108.6 kt of ammonia in 2020. There is a proposal in the EU Clean Air Package[2]released in December 2013, for the Commission to ratify the Gothenburg Protocol on behalf of the EU, which would be followed by the expectation that Member States would move swiftly to ratify in their own right, most likely sometime in 2015. In addition, a revised National Emissions Ceiling (NEC) Directive was released as part of the EU Clean Air Package. The proposed amendment to the NEC directive will impose a further reduction target for NH3 by 2030 and will also introduce targets for Methane (CH4) and Particulate Matter (PM2.5).

The 2030 targets of interest to the Irish agricultural sector are as follows:

Ireland / EU 28 average
Ammonia / -7% / -27%
Methane / -7% / -33%
PM2.5 / -35% / -51%

Climate Change

Presently, the EU Climate and Energy Package of 2008[3]which sets out ambitious targets for 2020,is the primary driver of climate policy in the EU.These targets, known as the "20-20-20" targets, set three key objectives for 2020:

  • A 20% reduction in EU greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels;
  • Raising the share of EU energy consumption produced from renewable resources to 20%;
  • A 20% improvement in the EU's energy efficiency.

This EU commitment operates in parallel to the second Kyoto commitment period 2013 – 2020 which was agreed under the Doha Amendment of the UNFCCC in December 2012.

Ireland was assigned a target of minus 20% for the non-ETS (non-emissions trading sectors) along with Denmark and Luxemburg. This is a very challenging target for Ireland especially as agriculture has the largest emissions profile in the non-ETS. A high share of the emissions come from agricultural livestock where there is limited availability of cost effective mitigation options.

Ireland’s target under the renewable energy directive component of the climate and energy package 2008 is to obtain 16% of our energy from renewable sources, as follows:

  • 40% renewable electricity;
  • 12% renewable heat;
  • 10% renewable transport.

Responsibility for ensuring the Irelands renewable energy target within this framework is met is a matter for the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources (DCENR) in the first instance. However the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) policies can contribute in particular to the renewable heat target through biomass policies and schemes.

In January 2014, the European Commission brought forward a Communication on proposals for a 2030 policy framework[4] for climate and energy. The proposed framework seeks to drive continued progress towards the EU’s long-term objective of a low-carbon economy by 2050. The Communication proposes a new governance framework for climate and energy policy in the period to 2030 based on national plans which will be prepared by Member States.

A central piece of the framework is the target to reduce EU domestic greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below the 1990 level by 2030. To achieve the overall 40% target, the sectors covered by the EU ETS would have to reduce their emissions by 43% compared to 2005 while sectors within the non-ETS would need to be cut by 30% below the 2005 level. The Commission also proposes an objective of increasing the share of renewable energy to at least 27% of the EU's energy consumption by 2030,to be binding at EU-wide level rather than at individual Member States level.

Ongoing discussions on this framework are aimed at agreeing the pledge that the EU will make in global negotiations on climate change which will culminate in Paris in December 2015. The development of this policy framework for climate and energy in the period from 2020 to 2030 is hugely important for the agriculture and land use sectors across the European Union. Ireland has been providing leadership in this area in the EU, and is also very active in the UN negotiations and in a variety of other international initiatives and alliances on this crucial issue for the EU and for the planet.

Nationally,the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government published the National Policy Position and final Heads of the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Bill[5] in April 2014. The Bill re-affirms Ireland’s commitment to compliance with existing and future greenhouse gas emission reduction obligations and requires the development of a national low-carbon roadmap (containing sectoral mitigation inputs from government departments) to drive the transition to a low-carbon, climate resilient, environmentally sustainable economy by 2050. It also requires the development of a national climate change adaptation plan[6] to identify and avoid unacceptable risks due to climate change.

Soil

The withdrawal of the proposed Soil Framework Directive in May 2014 means that no formal EU soil policy now exists. However, the importance of soil protection is recognised in number of important strategic documents:

  • "The Future We Want" agreed by Heads of State at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012 (Rio+20) underlines the importance of soil and the contribution good soil management can make, inter alia, to economic growth, biodiversity, sustainable agriculture and food security, climate change and improving water availability. It recognises the need for urgent action to reverse land degradation and “toachieve a land-degradation neutral world in the context of sustainable development”;
  • The Communication from the Commission on a “Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe” of September 2011 includes a milestone for 2020 that “the rate of land take is on track with an aim to achieve no net land take by 2050; soil erosion is reduced and the soil organic matter increased, with remedial work on contaminated sites well underway”; and
  • The Seventh Environment Action Programme (7th EAP) commits the EU and its Member States to increase efforts to reduce land degradation processes, to remediate contaminated sites and to integrate land use aspects into coordinated decision-making across government “supported by the adoption of targets on soil and on land as a resource, and land planning objectives”. In particular, the 7th EAP urges the Union and its Member States to “reflect as soon as possible on how soil quality issues could be addressed using a targeted and proportionate risk-based approach within a binding legal framework. Targets should also be set for sustainable land use and soil.”

The EU has commenced a process towards developing a new consensus legislative initiative on soil protection that will focus on and address the most urgent soil degradation processes, such as soil sealing, erosion, loss of organic matter, landslides and contamination.

Water

The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD), encompassing a set of 11 key existing EU Directives related to water, is the overall driver of water policy in the EU and as a EU Member State, Ireland is obliged to implement it. The WFD sets strict deadlines for meeting water quality objectives across Member States. Under the WFD, Ireland has assigned River Basin Districts, each of which a River Basin Management Plan was published in July 2010. These plans describe all Irish waters and their quality status. Each Plan sets out a programme of measures to assist all sectors in collectively achieving the WFD objective of ‘good status’ in all waters by 2015, i.e. the end of the first cycle of WFD implementation. There are some exempted water bodies identified which for particular reasons, have had their deadline for achieving ‘good status’ pushed out to a second WFD cycle, i.e. 2021, or a third WFD cycle, i.e. 2027. The first cycle of implementation in Ireland is running from 2010 to 2015 and preparation has already begun on the implementation of the 2nd WFD cycle.

International level policy includes the OECD’s Green Growth Strategy. This is defined as a way to pursue economic growth and development, while preventing environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, and unsustainable natural resource use.

New water policy Regulations (S.I. 350 of 2014) have been made by the Minister for Environment and currently a public consultation is underway on the development of 2nd cycle River Basin Management Plans (RBMP), implementing the EU Water framework Directive.

Biodiversity

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was adopted in 1992 with the main aim of the conservation of biological diversity including the promotion of the sustainable use of the components of biological diversity. While the convention has 168 signatories, the non-binding nature of the goals within it, meant that little real progress was made for many years, with the result that global biodiversity losses continued.

The principal legislation protecting biodiversity in the EU are the Birds and the Habitats Directives. NATURA 2000 sites are protected habitats for flora and fauna of European importance, comprising of Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) designated under the Habitats Directive and Special Protection Areas (SPA) designated under the Birds Directive. Approximately 13% of Ireland’s land area has been designated as NATURA 2000, compared to the EU average of 17.5%.

In 2011, the EU Commission published a communication on the new EU Biodiversity Strategy, entitled ‘Our life insurance, our natural capital: an EU biodiversity strategy in 2020’. This strategy identifies 6 specific areas for action, including improved implementation of the nature directives and aiming to maintain and restore ecosystems and their services.

Ireland’s second National Biodiversity Plan was published in 2011 and covers the period to 2016. This Plan was prepared against a background of increasing biodiversity pressures and losses at both European and global level. It contains 102 actions that aim to better understand and protect biodiversity. Some key actions for the agriculture sector are as follows:

  • develop measures in future rural development programmes for the protection and enhancement of ecosystem services and biodiversity;
  • further develop criteria to identify High Nature Value (HNV) farmland and develop measures to address threats to HNV;
  • effective implementation of cross-compliance and statutory management requirements to ensure conservation of biodiversity;
  • conduct a systematic evaluation process for any agri-environmental schemes delivered, involving a robust ecological monitoring programme;
  • strengthen measures to ensure conservation, and availability for use, of genetic diversity of crop varieties, livestock breeds and races;
  • ensure that agri-environmental schemes provide targeted and costed prescriptions that will contribute to favourable conservation status in farmed designated sites.

3.Current Sectoral analysis

GHG and AmmoniaEmissions Trend

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) figures published on 28th May 2014 project that in the absence of abatement measures agriculture emissions will increase by 9% over the period 2013 to 2020 or 3% above the Effort Sharing Decision (ESD) reference year of 2005. This is predominantly driven by a projected shift to dairy production and away from specialist beef production, increase in dairy cow numbers of 14% between 2015 and 2020 following the abolition of milk quotas in 2015 and reflects national plans to expand milk production under Food Harvest 2020 as well as a projected increase in fertiliser nitrogen use of 27% by 2020. Overall there is a limited change in total bovine numbers as the national herd evolves to take a greater dairy orientation.

The net effect of projected developments in levels of agricultural activity and input usage is to leave agricultural GHG emissions in 2030, at 19.7 mt CO2 eq. Over the projection period, aggregate agricultural GHG emissions exhibit an increase relative to the 2005 level by over 5 %. Likewise NH3 emissions will be on an upward trend as a result of increases in activity levels rising to approx 117kt NH3 from 103kt NH3 in 2012.

It is important to reiterate that the projected level of emissions reflects a business as usual scenario, and this does not consider potential emission reductions that might arise through the adoption of abatement technologies. Incorporation of abatement technologies in this type of analysis is complicated for several reasons such as costs, knowledge transfer, age etc.

Notwithstanding these considerations Teagasc has produced a Marginal Abatement Cost Curve (MACC). The MACC estimates the agricultural GHG abatement potential that will exist by 2020. It is found that agricultural GHG emissions could be reduced by 1.1 Mt or about 5 % based on the uptake of a range of measures (Schulte and Donnellan, 2012). Estimates of the technical abatement potential achievable by 2030 have yet to be produced.

Nitrogen use

The level of grassland synthetic nitrogen use is illustrated below. A downward trend in nitrogen use per hectare is evident in the period 2000 to 2012. Some of the decline can be explained by more efficient usage of slurry, but the rising price of nitrogen may have also been a factor in the decline in its use.

Intensity of Nitrogen Usage on grassland in Ireland

Source: FAPRI-Ireland (2013)

Nitrogen use reached a low in 2011 and 2012. However, nitrogen use rose again in 2013, most likely as a reaction to the experience of the fodder crisis. It is difficult to be sure what the required amount of nitrogen is at the current level of production intensity, given the extent of the variation in nitrogen use in the last three years. In turn this makes it more challenging to project future levels of nitrogen use.

Over the projection period there is an intensification of some agricultural production (most notably dairy production) which may require increased inputs. This is particularly noticeable in the case of synthetic nitrogen use, principally due to the projected increase in milk production. Milk production has a synthetic nitrogen requirement per hectare that is typically three times that of beef systems. In the aggregate, fertiliser usage rises over time reflecting the increasing intensity of production and the increasing share of milk production in overall bovine agriculture.

Emissions intensity

Major efforts are being made in further improving the climate & resource efficiency of agriculture and to build upon the progress made to date. Analysis of the emissions intensity of Irish agriculture more closely illustrates the major progress that has been made. It shows that the Irish agriculture sector has not been complacent and has succeeded in achieving efficiency improvements as can be seen from the graph below.

In summary, emissions intensity per calorie of food output in 2013 is reduced by approximately 14% relative to 2005 and early estimates project that the Business As Usual (BAU) 2030 emission intensity will be a quarter below the emission intensity in 2005. Early estimates of agricultural mitigation measures are approximately 35% below 2005 although absolute emissions remain reasonably stable.However, this is the maximum that is technically achievable and unlikely to be fully matched in practice.