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Coveney wants review on how agri carbon emissions are assessed
By Joe Dermody
Europe needs to review how agriculture’s carbon emissions are assessed, or risk seeing food production move to less eco-efficient countries like Brazil, Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney has warned.
His comments follow an ESRI report which said: “If climate policies curtail Irish milk and beef production, production will move overseas to places like Brazil, without any global environmental benefit.“Preserving emissions- efficient production within Europe would be preferable.”
Mr Coveney welcomed the global ecological view taken by the ESRI, noting an independent high-level implementation committee is to complete an analysis of the likely impacts of achieving Ireland’s Food Harvest 2020 growth targets on environmental issues by the end of July, and publish a report by the end of October.
Areas being studied include biodiversity, water, soil, air quality, landscape and climatic factors including impacts on GHG emission levels.
Interested parties have until Jun 28 to contribute to the report.
Mr Coveney said: “I have consistently highlighted the need for climate policies to take account of the important issue of food security, particularly in the context of increasing global demand for food and the negative impacts of climate change in many important food-producing regions.
“There needs to be a major rethink at UN and EU level of the relationship between global food security and climate change goals.
“A simple focus on aggregate climate emission targets risks having the perverse effect of driving beef and dairy production away from carbon/GHG efficient areas such as Ireland to less efficient parts of the world with the net effect of increasing global emissions.”
Mr Coveney said food is different from other sectors as, according to the UN FAO, food production must increase by 70% by 2050 to meet global demand.
Ireland is working hard with others at UN level to get the issue of food security and climate change addressed directly.
The minister has also approached the EU to recognise the need to address food production in a different way. “It should be recognised that the whole FH2020 strategy is built around the concept of smart, green, growth which means producing increased output in an environmentally sustainable way, and being able to prove this to the market,” Mr Coveney said.
FH2020 was developed in partnership with the EPA, Teagasc, Enterprise Ireland, Bord Bia, BIM, Forfás and other government departments.
The high level committee looking at FH2020’s environmental impacts will publish its report by the end of October.
The IFA and the ICSA have also welcomed the view expressed by the ESRI, both highlighting the lack of environmental logic of imposing rules to cut carbon emissions from agri-food in the EU, while simultaneously increasing imports from states in which lower eco standards apply.
IFA climate change spokesman Jer Bergin said: “The ESRI correctly identifies the need for a special case to be made at EU level for managing agricultural emissions, and this must be secured before the Government considers any legislation. The ESRI report endorses IFA’s view that displacing production here would move it overseas to regions such as South America, without any global environmental benefit.
“It is important that our potential to increase output and employment is not undermined by any onerous legislation.”
* For more on details on the report go to http://exa.mn/69