IATP's Anne Laure Constantin is in Bonn, Germany, this week for global talks to develop a new international framework to address climate change. The Bonn meeting is leading up to the larger global climate meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009.
OK, seriously, no one dares to utter the word "exemption." But special treatment, certainly! Livestock exporters argue that agriculture should be considered a special case: there are limits to how much you can reduce methane emissions from cows and sheep. According to them, it is impossible to achieve similar emission reductions in agriculture as in other industrial sectors. Their ultimate argument is that imposing excessively strict limits on agriculture's greenhouse gas emissions could jeopardize global food security.
One idea they are floating around is that for agriculture, emission reduction targets should be expressed on an "intensity" basis. Countries with a large part of their emissions from agriculture—like New Zealand, Uruguay and Argentina—would be granted special treatment whereby they don't necessarily have to reduce their emissions in absolute terms, but rather, only the quantity of greenhouse gases emitted for a given quantity of product (say a ton of milk for example). The countries argue that since world food production will have to increase to fit the needs of a growing population, "realistic expectations" are necessary regarding the possibility of reducing emissions from the agriculture sector.
There is no formal proposal around this idea, but Bonn was an occasion to test the waters. Judging from the important New Zealand delegation (government and industry hand-in-hand) in Bonn, and the attractiveness of the idea to other countries as well (from South and Central America in particular... but there is no reason why the U.S. would not buy that too!), it could develop quite quickly.
That would be a very dangerous road to go down on. Agriculture represents around 12 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, not counting associated emissions from deforestation, transport and processing of food products. Given that developed countries need to cut their emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020 (compared to 1990), it is unlikely they can afford to disregard such an important sector. Revising production methods in the crop sector will be one way to go, and quickly. It also becomes more and more clear that the typical Western diet based on heavy meat consumption will have to change.
