By Alex De Pinto, Senior Research Fellow
It is widely recognized that natural resource use in many developing countries, from crop production to deforestation, is responsible for the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions. We also know that, in many countries, the agricultural and forestry sectors can provide low-cost climate change mitigation opportunities. As countries experience economic growth and choose among the available development pathways, they are in a favorable position to adopt natural resource use technologies and production practices characterized by low GHG emissions. Rather than embedding high emissions practices in their development and intervene on emissions reduction at a later stage, they can utilize Low Emissions Development Strategies (LEDS). (New IFPRI report)
The U.S. Government launched an initiative, the Enhancing Capacity for Low Emission Development Strategies (EC-LEDS), to support developing countries’ in their efforts to pursue long-term and transformative development. The initiative supports sustainable and climate-resilient economic growth compatibly with a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (USAID, 2011). Under the EC-LEDS initiative, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has conducted an analysis of Colombia’s GHG emissions deriving from land use change and crop production for the period 2008 - 2030.
One of the greatest challenges facing policymakers is the design of solutions to multi-dimensional problems and devising LEDS is an example of multi-objective policy making: increasing agricultural productivity and food security in a changing climatic environment while reducing GHG emissions. The purpose of our work is to help policymakers in their evaluation of trade-offs, opportunities, and repercussions of policies that that target GHG emissions reduction.
We believe that given the complexity of the topic and the resulting complexity of the analysis, the modeling framework and tools should be flexible to incorporate new information as it becomes available and fully transparent, so that trust in the results can be built. It is expected that stakeholders, from governments, to producers’ and consumes’ organizations, to farmers, will benefit from policies devised with the support of solid evidence and the effects of which can be presented and investigated as potential scenarios by all the parties affected.
Colombia is actively engaged in designing LEDS and after several consultation with stakeholders ranging from government officials to producers’ organizations to experts for academia , we have determined the most relevant policies revolved around reducing area allocated to pasture, reducing deforestation in the Amazon forest, and expanding pal production.
Our results indicate that a policy that successfully reduced land allocated to pasture would greatly reduce projected deforestation with significant gains in terms of carbon stock, would reduce GHG emissions, and generate higher revenues. A policy that targets deforestation would also increase carbon stock but with a reduction in revenues from agricultural products. However, the abatement cost per ton GHG reduced is relatively low, about $5 per CO2eq. Against expectations, a policy that expands the area allocated to pal would have negative effects on both GHG emission and revenues.
Our analysis reaffirms the importance of including of all land uses in the analysis of policies that target emissions in Agriculture. Shifts in land uses determined by changes area allocated to various agricultural uses have great on existing carbon stock which might be more significant that the resulting changes in GHG emission from crop cultivation.
