Mr. John Muldowney:

As I understand it, reporting to the UNFCCC is a snapshot in time and a single year of what happens in the area under wetland. Accounting that emission is relative to a baseline and historic knowledge of how water tables were managed in a reference year relative to how they are managed today. The development of our metrics, monitoring, reporting and verification around that are less well developed. That is what all member states find difficult. Carbon pools are not accounted by the UNFCCC or anything. Peatlands are an enormous carbon pool and grassland is a big carbon pool. Arable soil would be a lower carbon pool. Forestry is a big carbon pool. Again, it is about new and additional activity and how to increase that is the issue. It is not just about a pool. One must consider it from that perspective.

How to balance emissions and removal is something identified in the Paris Agreement and it will be considered more in that context, particularly with regard to transparency and how other member states are looking at this. It is an area that will grow in significance. I would guess that Ireland will be interested in the area and we will look to the National Parks and Wildlife Service to engage more in this, as well as other users of wetlands. My specialty is agriculture, grazing land and cropland and how that has worked. We have been working on that.