Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

341. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he has carried out any study or assessment to quantify any mitigating effects that arise regarding greenhouse gas emissions due to open grassland farming, the extensive hedgerow system and forestry in the State. [20502/13]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

My Department, on an ongoing basis, provides funding to Teagasc and to Irish third level institutions for research into the best ways to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions through the land based sectors and forestry. In 2012 I announced the provision of more than €30 million to fund the latest round of research projects, €7M of which is climate related. The Department continues to monitor ongoing research both nationally and internationally in an effort to find suitable mitigation technologies and approaches.

One of the larger projects my Department has funded is the 'Gaseous Emissions and Land Use Network - GHG Ireland' . This network aims to bring together, for a 4 year initiative, all principal investigators working in the field of agricultural climate change research. The main focus of the network is to improve our understanding of carbon stock changes in agricultural soils so that we can contribute to the development of a more robust inventory, and underpin future accounting for these categories. My Department, together with Dept of Environment Community and Local Government, has put a huge effort into negotiating a more favourable outcome on this decision.

There is close co-operation between my Department and the EPA to ensure that our respective environmental research programmes on greenhouse gas emissions are complimentary. Ireland is also engaged with the EU Joint Programming Initiative - Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change (JPI-FACCE). The first multi-country research under the JPI FACCE programme was launched at the start of 2013. Ireland is involved with other EU countries, and the USA, Canada and New Zealand also participate.

Ireland is a founder member of the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases which was established in December 2009. The objective of this Alliance is to pool the resources of like-minded countries and so enable the agriculture sector to continue to reduce emissions. The work of the Alliance is focused on three Research Groups; Livestock, Crops and Rice. Teagasc represent Ireland on the Livestock and Crops Research Groups.

In recent years, a number of important reports have been initiated on these issues including the project 'Celticflux' was funded by the EPA under STRIVE. It provided measurement and modelling of greenhouse gas fluxes from grasslands and a peatland in Ireland; a hedgerow mapping project by Teagasc where all mature hedgerows wider than 2m have been mapped. This project found that approximately 450,000 Ha, or 6.4%, of the country is covered by hedgerows, individual trees, small woodland patches and scrub - nearly the equivalent area of Co. Tipperary. This map database will be freely available via the Teagasc website in the near future

An 'Additions and refinements to the Irish forest carbon accounting and reporting tool' project which involves multidisciplinary collaboration between several national institutions, and will focus on applying improved estimates of CO₂ emission factors to afforested organic soils and organo-mineral soils; refining the modelling of soil carbon stocks and changes in mineral soils using a spatial framework; detecting deforestation and disturbance events from medium resolution hypertemporal optical satellite imagery and characterising them using higher spatial resolution optical and microwave images; developing methodologies to investigate the fate and management of forest deadwood carbon pools after disturbance events; and constructing algorithms to quantify changes to deadwood carbon.

The combined outputs from these research activities will be assimilated into CARBWARE, thereby improving the national reporting capacity. Close collaboration with the Irish GHG network will ensure standardisation of outputs, with delivery of geodatabases derived from the research to support DAFM and Forest Service forest management.

The results of this research, allied with data on land and forestry activity that is supplied by my Department through the Central Statistics Office, inform the work of the Environmental Protection Agency which has responsibility for the development and maintenance of the national inventory for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. One of the most important components of this inventory is the estimation of carbon sequestration of Irish land use.

Clearly, Ireland is deeply committed to research that is aimed at improving parameters of production, environment, and socio-economics. It is vital that the results of this research are implemented with the help of our stakeholders in agri-food, so that we can guarantee the supply of sustainable food into the future. while combating climate change.

International and EU Focus:

At the highest international level, the Department of Agriculture has actively participated in meetings and conferences of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) over the past number of years. Throughout this process, Ireland has been the main driver within the EU for a UNFCCC decision on agriculture and is leading the EU effort which seeks the establishment of a work programme on agriculture.

Ireland has also been raising the issue of agriculture at EU Commission level. In this regard Minister Hogan and myself as well as officials of our two departments, have worked closely together. We both met with the Commissioner for Climate Change in September 2011 and both our departments have continued to press the issue in 2012. In October the Commission said that they “understand and acknowledge” the “nature and carbon efficiency of the agriculture sector in Ireland, as well as its importance on economic and social grounds”. This represents a significant step forward for Irish agriculture following a great deal of work in the past 18 months.

Ireland, through my Department currently holds the lead negotiator role for the EU on agriculture for the UNFCCC sessions. The Bonn session, in June 2013 during our Presidency of the EU, presents an opportunity to further raise the profile of agriculture both within and outside the EU, with the aim of advancing the discussion further, including to Ministerial level at the next UNFCCC Conference of the Parties in Warsaw next November.

It is important to acknowledge the help and assistance of the D/ECLG, as lead Department on climate change, the Department of Foreign Affairs, Teagasc and the EPA in this regard. Significant advances have been made as a result of a great deal of work by all concerned. There is a lot more work to do, but we are seeing some positive movement at UNFCCC and EU levels and I can assure you that we are fully committed to continue this work in meeting the challenges ahead.