Ireland is a party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) under which the State is required to estimate and report its emissions and removals of greenhouse gases (GHG) from its sources or sinks on an annual basis. The National Inventory Report (NIR) includes emissions and removals from Agriculture and the Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sectors. The UNFCCC reporting forms the basis of the attribution of emissions and removals in the Climate Action Plan.
Climate Action Plan 2023 has outlined how emission reductions in the agriculture sector will be achieved in the coming years. The Plan increases our ambition for efficiency in the sector while also promoting diversification of agricultural activities which will offer farmers more ways to generate an income. These actions will encourage farmers to diversify into more sustainable sectors, including organics, tillage, agro-forestry and biomethane production.
While recognising that the reduction of sectoral emissions may accrue to other sectors for some actions, there will be a return flow of diversified income into the agricultural sector. These new income streams will displace more traditional GHG intensive income streams, thereby reducing emissions in the agricultural sector while maintaining or increasing over all farm incomes.
In addition, the current EU Commission’s proposal for a Union certification framework for carbon removals is making its way through the EU Council. The proposal will create a carbon certification scheme, creating carbon removal credits for sale on the voluntary ‘off-set’ market. Such a system will allow for a wide variety of business models to reward carbon removals by farmers, land managers, foresters, and other stakeholders for which many of the diversification actions in the Climate Action Plan should be eligible. The scheme is voluntary, and it is anticipated that it will be operational in stages from 2025, and fully operational post 2030.
