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Emissions exchange rates: how many tonnes of CO2 for a tonne of methane?

By Don McClatchy - posted Friday, 13 November 2009


Several speakers noted that there are economic and policy dimensions to the choice of metrics, inferring that it is not a task which should be left to physical scientists alone. Despite recognising these problems with GWP, the meeting did not recommend discarding it, instead just encouraging further research into the merits of alternative metrics as information about future policy goals becomes available. Apparently, no alternative single measure stood out as being undeniably superior to GWP. There may also have been pressure from above for the meeting rapporteurs not to “upset the apple cart”, by writing anything which might risk stalling the ongoing negotiations. Perhaps surprisingly, the Meeting Report did not address the question of whether the use of more than one metric - say one for short-lived greenhouse gases and another for long-lived ones - would be more appropriate in the climate change negotiations.

The IPCC, in its “First Assessment Report” (1990), at first tentatively embraced the GWP concept, according to Dr Shine who was one of its authors. He recently quoted from that report (in “The global warming potential - the need for an interdisciplinary retrial”, Climatic Change (2009)):

It must be stressed that there is no universally accepted methodology for combining all the relevant factors into a single (metric) … A simple approach (i.e. the GWP) has been adopted here to illustrate the difficulties inherent in the concept.

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Subsequently, these cautions seem to have been overlooked. IPCC endorsed GWP, and this provided a mechanism for the Kyoto Protocol to be a multi-gas treaty, based on a single, all-embracing metric.

It is with a sense of urgency that the world’s governments are trying to negotiate a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, which will be more comprehensive and effective in reducing global GHG emissions and thus slowing global warming. The way agricultural emissions (particularly of methane) are addressed in such an agreement has the potential to create a serious political snag to its acceptance in many countries. If the use of “GWP” is retained, farmers organisations can be expected to argue that, with all the uncertainty surrounding its logical and scientific basis, it is unacceptable to them. This would risk jeopardising the whole agreement.

What is the way forward?

If Kyoto II follows Kyoto I in establishing just single declining limits on each country’s overall GHG emissions, then individual country governments will have the option of reducing emissions in non-agricultural sectors more, in order to partially or completely let agriculture off the hook. This may be what politically powerful farmers’ organisations in many countries are counting on happening. If some major countries decide to exempt their agricultural sector from emission reductions to some extent, then it will be politically very difficult for other governments not to follow suit, despite the implied added costs to non-agricultural sectors and to their taxpayers. Such an outcome would put predominantly agricultural countries, including many developing countries, in a very difficult position, so they will then favour minimal targets for emission cuts.

A second possibility is that it will be agreed internationally to negotiate reductions in agricultural emissions separately, following a precedent for special sector treatment established more than 50 years ago in the first GATT agreement. There will be arguments for this based on food security concerns, and the essential nature of farm production. This would imply an international acceptance of lower reductions in agricultural emissions. Problems associated with the choice of a multi-gas metric would remain, however, providing grounds for different groups within agriculture, and in the non-agricultural sectors, to dispute whether they were being fairly treated.

In both of these first two cases where the use of a multi-gas metric is to be retained, there would appear to be a strong logical case for first negotiating the particular climate target which countries are collectively trying to achieve, and then choosing a metric designed for that target. Choice of more than one target may well imply the choice of more than one metric. Replacement of GWP with one or more other, more focused metrics would also be implied.

Perhaps a more logical alternative to the second possibility above would be to negotiate commitments on the principal GHGs separately. Then the problems associated with the use of a single metric could be avoided altogether. Justification for different targets for different gases could take into consideration the availability of alternative technologies for emissions reductions or avoidance in each case, while still implicitly taking into account the food security arguments. As a simplification of this, it may prove acceptable to classify GHGs into groups - say into “very-short-lived”, “short-lived” (including methane) and “long-lived” (including CO2 and nitrous oxide) GHGs - and to negotiate reduction commitments applying to each group.

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But it is certainly time that these issues deriving from the choice and use (until now) of GWP were brought to the fore in the negotiations. They can surely be overlooked no longer, if problems of selling the climate negotiations to the world’s farmers are to be overcome.

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About the Author

Dr Don McClatchy is a retired agricultural and trade policy consultant.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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