Guy Trafford highlights the political games being played at COP26, the fact that only a handful of countries can make any meaningful difference, and how science can cut dairy methane by 50% of the target with one practical innovation

As COP26 begins to wind down the cynic in me thinks “well, that was a waste of time”. However, this is a little unkind on the conference as some progress has been made.

Probably the area that has brought the most promise is the joint announcement from the USA and China, the two largest sources of emissions. They intend to work together and share technologies that can reduce GHG emissions. The countries said they will work together on deforestation and hold a bilateral meeting next year about methane.

Light on any meaningful detail, the fact they are and intend to be talking provides some promise.

The lack of reduction commitments from many of the conference attendees, while not surprising, must be concerning. It sounds as though there is more disagreement than agreement overall. Depending on whose figures you go by the current increases in global warming in the next decades will range between +2.4^oC up to +2.7^oC with the most optimistic figure being +1.8^oC.

None of these forecasts provide for a positive future given we are currently at +1.2^oC above historical norms.

Two of the biggest emitters, China and India, have pledged to be carbon neutral, China by 2060 and India by 2070. In the meantime neither country has peaked in their emissions outputs with China just promising to have done that by 2030.

Borrowing a summary from the New York Times there a four main sticking points to be resolved at the conference:

EMISSIONS CUTS
Under the landmark Paris climate agreement of 2015, every nation agreed that humanity should be “pursuing efforts” to hold warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. The initial pledges in Paris would not get the world there, but over time, the hope was, nations would ratchet up their efforts. Exactly how to accelerate action remains a big source of contention.

PAYING THE BILL
Money has long been a sticking point in the fight against climate change, and it was no different in Glasgow. Developing countries are being urged to accelerate their shift away from coal and other fossil fuels, but they say that they lack the financial resources to do so, and that rich countries have been stingy with aid. The world’s wealthiest economies have pledged to do more, but are still falling short of their promises.

REPARATIONS
When climate-fuelled storms wreak havoc, it is the poorer nations that often suffer, even if they have done little to contribute to the problem. Demands for compensation are continuing to grow.

CARBON OFFSETS
The Paris accord called for regulating the fast-growing global market for carbon offsets, but that it is an extremely dense and technical subject. Negotiators are still trying to find a way through the thicket.

Given New Zealand is relying on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) as a means to bring emissions down, and also given that the Government is planning on working with over countries to gain credits to top up our shortfalls, the lack of agreement on Article 6 should be of some concern.

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement is one of the unresolved elements of the United Nations "rulebook" which will set out the terms of how governments can trade emissions reductions to help meet climate targets.

New Zealand’s Minister James Shaw is co-chair of transparency talks at the summit, aimed at ensuring countries' emissions reduction pledges are verifiable. Perhaps indicating just how much game playing is going on internationally even New Zealand, some would argue, has been a little loose with numbers.

If, as most experts agree, extreme weather events are strongly linked to the increasing global temperatures and it seems the temperature is going to keep climbing for some decades yet.

Then land owners (I include foresters, livestock farmers, arable farmers and horticulturalists here), need to play a careful public relations hand. As a result of the South Canterbury floods of last winter central government injected $5 million into the region to assist farmers and rural communities.

This pales in comparison to the approximate $200 million (2020 dollars) that went into the East Coast of the North Island after Cyclone Bola and while the South Canterbury floods were certainly devastating for those affected the scale was considerably less than what occurred in 1988.

Landowners’ ability to withstand future droughts, floods, fire and what ever else nature chooses to throw at us will be sorely tested and only by working as a cohesive society will New Zealand be able to work a path through the future.

Farmers need to show that they can also be part of future solutions.

It looks unlikely, at least in the short to medium term that the internationally community is going to get its act together.

The risk to landowners and particularly livestock farmers is that if they expect society to assist them when things turn sour, then they are going to have to convince society that they are worth helping. This is not an easy task especially when there are many already calling for downsizing of dairying.

Other livestock system will also end up in the firing line as climate issues worsen. Rather than looking at what is the minimum that the different sectors can do the psyche needs to shift to trying to maximise what can be done.

However, regardless of what New Zealand and in fact most smaller nations do, until the “big 5” make comprehensive reductions, little is going to improve. Together they contribute over 50% of all emissions. The recent reductions mentioned on the graph below have come from the impact of Covid-19, not any planning by the world’s leaders.

On a positive side, many will have seen the progress made at Lincoln University on the news on TV1. That showed a relatively simple innovation by treating dairy effluent in ponds, and the methane emitted can almost be eliminated. Developed with Ravensdown’s EcoPond system, they have virtually eliminated the methane emitted from effluent ponds, thereby cutting approximately 5% off the farm’s methane emissions.

Given that agriculture is (only) tasked with reducing methane emissions by 10% by 2030, this puts dairy farmers at least halfway there. And perhaps is the opportunity to lift the expectations over what could be achieved in the next 9 years. I was a little disappointed in the Greenpeace spokesperson’s reaction which was rather disparaging. She seemed more concerned that the cows were still here, regardless of the reduced methane. It’s the impact of cows and other livestock that is the problem, not the animals themselves.  

For what it’s worth, New Zealand emits 0.17% of global emissions, although our per capita emissions are more difficult to ignore.