Climate change mitigation strategies for agriculture: an analysis of nationally determined contributions, biennial reports and biennial update reports

ABSTRACT

The role of agriculture in the context of climate change is a complex issue. On the one hand, concerns about food security highlight the need to prioritize adaptation; on the other hand, the target of the Paris Agreement (keeping global temperature rise well below 2°C) cannot be achieved without a significant decrease in agricultural emissions. Various analyses of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) submitted under the Paris Agreement show how countries intend to prioritize the needs for adaptation and mitigation in the agricultural sector. This paper focuses on 46 countries that contribute 90% of global agricultural emissions and asks how they are addressing the agricultural sector in their climate mitigation policies. It takes into account that conditions and circumstances in countries vary significantly but might also indicate similar patterns. The analysis is based on information provided by countries in their NDCs, as well as their Biennial Reports (BRs) or Biennial Update Reports (BURs) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It further includes data on national agricultural emissions. By applying a mixed methods approach, which combines qualitative content analysis and comparative cluster analysis, we find that countries vary in their progress on agriculture and climate mitigation for many different reasons. These reasons include the national perception of the problem, divergent starting points for climate policy, particularities of the agricultural sector and, correspondingly, the availability of cost-effective mitigation technologies.

Key policy insights

• While for many countries the NDCs signify the beginning of their climate policy, UNFCCC biennial reports can be used to learn more about the policies that countries have already implemented.

• Mitigation action in the agricultural sector is emphasized most prominently in cases where co-benefits are possible and production is not impacted negatively.

• Policies and measures in the agricultural sector often do not align with the UNFCCC system of monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV). In addition to improving MRV-systems, it seems equally important to exchange national experiences with implemented measures and policies.

• The Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture could take into account the problem of different definitions of sector boundaries and thus the importance of different mitigation measures.

Acknowledgements

The study was enabled by the German Johann-Heinrich von Thünen-Institute in the context of a PhD position. We would like to thank our three reviewers and the editors for their valuable comments that helped us a lot for improving the final paper. We further thank Folkhard Isermeyer and Doris Fuchs for supporting and encouraging this research. We also want to express our acknowledgment to the FAO for providing a free database on agricultural emissions. This tool is extremely important for making policy and research in this field transparent.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Susanna Esther Hönle http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5731-7170

Notes

1 Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

2 Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry.

3 Where a country has not yet ratified the Paris Agreement and registered its NDC, we used its Intended NDC, submitted in the run-up to the 2015 Paris Climate Conference.

4 This is, for example, the case for measures targeting Soil Organic Carbon (SOC). Measures addressing CO₂ in soils would fall under the LULUCF category. However, due to the issues of non-permanence and saturation, it is rather difficult to reliably report on these measures (see: Smith & Bustamante, 2014; Powlson et al., 2011).

5 A match occurs when a country of group 1A (‘highest expectation to mitigate agricultural emissions’) can be found in the ‘advanced’ group 2A. For 1B and 1C countries (‘medium expectations’), a match means that they are assigned to the ‘progressing’ cluster of 2B. 1D countries are expected to be found in the ‘inactive’ group 2C because their NDCs already indicated low engagement in this field of policy.

6 It must be mentioned, however, that at the farm-level there are also many reasons for non-adoption of these so-called ‘win-win’ solutions, even when financial incentives are offered (Moran, Lucas, & Barnes, 2013).