Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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570. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the status of research being carried out on grasslands as carbon sinks. [32151/18]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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My Department recognises the importance of soil carbon and its contribution to the global challenge set by the Paris agreement to limit warming to 2 degrees above pre industrial levels and to pursue limiting warming to less than 1.5 degrees. Scientific research has a central role to play in developing our understanding of the carbon sequestration potential of our natural land resources. To this end, my Department recognises the important role Soil Organic Carbon can play in improving our understanding of the role the land use sector plays in mitigating greenhouse gases and ensuring the environmental integrity of the access to Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) credits provided in the EU regulations agreed in June 2018.

Research by Teagasc and the EPA has highlighted that grasslands play a key role in the provision and regulation of important ecosystem services. From a climate change perspective grassland soils have the ability to sequester atmospheric CO₂, thus potentially contributing to climate change mitigation.

In the Teagasc report An Analysis of Abatement Potential of Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Irish Agriculture 2021-2030 published this year it was found that, with regard to particular individual mitigation measures, better management of grassland could potentially sequester carbon.

Research projects related to the topic of grasslands as carbon sinks under the National Call and which are funded by my Department are listed below:

^ European Research Network on GHG Mitigation and Monitoring - European Research Network

While the Department has invested heavily in recent years in research to better understand the role of grassland as carbon sinks, I am very conscious that ongoing funding is need to deepen our understanding of the complex science in this area and that this can be optimally done through international collaboration. Therefore my Department’s more recent investments in soil carbon have mandated international collaboration as a condition of funding.

This week I have announced details of a €600,000 grant of a new Agro-Soc project arising from DAFM’s 2017 Research Call. The project, which is being co-funded by the EPA, plans on examining carbon sequestration mitigation options that do not adversely impact on agricultural production. Improved soil carbon should lead to better nutrient cycling and soil nutrient availability. Management practices that can increase soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks to mitigate climate change will provide the basis for inclusion of grassland soils into both carbon trading schemes and life-cycle assessments (LCA), which will assist the sector both in terms of carbon credits and a reduced carbon footprint on agricultural produce. This project seeks to quantify carbon sequestration within managed grasslands, to identify the upper limits of soil carbon storage and identifying the regulators within a pastoral system that control soil carbon capture. As such it will directly address the 4 per mile initiative to enhance carbon stocks and improve soil quality in agricultural soils.

My Department required that this work will be undertaken in cooperation and coordination with the EU Joint Programming Initiative on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change’s (FACCE JPI) ‘Thematic Annual Programming on organic matter sequestration in the soil’ (TAP-Soil) initiative to maximise international synergies. Similarly, in 2017, DAFM provided almost €500,000 in funding to enable Irish researchers collaborate with international partners in two relevant soil carbon sequestration themed projects funded under the ERA-GAS on greenhouse gas (GHG) Mitigation and Monitoring.

Research continues to be carried out and my Department will monitor the outcomes of relevant research in this area as it arises.