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2. Climate Change and Greenhouse Gas Mitigation

2.1 Background

There is growing consensus that the gradual increase in global surface temperature is more than a long-term cyclic climatic phenomenon and that an anthropogenic, human-induced, influence is at work. While the increase has been low to date, 0.5°C to 2.0°C in the last century, current climate models indicate that the trajectory will increase over the current century. Six gases contribute to the so-called “greenhouse gas effect”, which is proposed as the main reason for climate changes.  Of those six gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) are most abundant and influential. They are also the three greenhouse gases that interact with the terrestrial biosphere, soil and vegetation, which is either their source, sink or both. Worldwide, CO2 from energy production, in particular from the burning of fossil fuels, provides the major source of CO2.  New Zealand is an exception to that rule as its strong agricultural base means that methane, derived from microorganisms in the rumen of sheep and cattle, is the greatest domestic source.

Climate change is a global problem that requires a global response. No country can escape its consequences and no country is too small to contribute to mitigation efforts. In New Zealand, while the expected warming will be less than the global average, the east of the country is expected to be drier and the west wetter. Adaptation to climate change impacts are important, and at least in the short to medium term some impacts, such as the ability to grow new crops, could be used to our advantage while others could be reduced if managed appropriately. The negative impacts that will eventuate to a greater or lesser degree include the availability of too much and too little water, changes in biodiversity, increases in biosecurity risks, and possible impacts on human health from new organisms, such as the Salt Marsh mosquito.

Mitigation is the only sustainable long-term option for managing climate change and, over time, for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from energy and agricultural use. To manage this requires the measurement and understanding of those changes in sources and sinks in the terrestrial biosphere that could capture greenhouse gases but that could also, without appropriate management, contribute further to the problem.

Part of the management framework will include the monitoring of carbon stocks in soils and forests. Management of the plantation forest estate of quick-growing exotic trees has meant that mechanisms are already largely in place to capture the changes in stocks in those forests. The same could not be said for our indigenous forest estate or for the carbon stocks in soils. Previous partial inventories had been made over the years for research and management purposes but no comprehensive long-term monitoring programme has been in place that would have helped managed for mitigation or report on our greenhouse gas stocks or fluxes in the national or international arena.

Despite the lack of a continuous monitoring system, a number of building blocks had been assembled over the years, often fortuitously as a by-product of biodiversity or primary production research and management. The foundations of a comprehensive carbon monitoring system were therefore already laid, albeit often well buried in notes, files and databases of scientists from current and previous eras. Using this template, a monitoring system has been designed for carbon that can be expanded to incorporate not only any the national land-based monitoring needs, but also, if required, other environmental monitoring needs.

2.2 Policy context

The policy context behind the need for a national carbon monitoring system began in June 1992, when New Zealand signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which was ratified in September 1993 and came into force in March 1994. The commitment of the UNFCCC is to reduce CO2 emissions to 1990 levels.

Article 3.3 of the UNFCCC states:

3. The Parties should take precautionary measures to anticipate, prevent or minimize the causes of climate change and mitigate its adverse effects. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such measures, taking into account that policies and measures to deal with climate change should be cost-effective so as to ensure global benefits at the lowest possible cost. To achieve this, such policies and measures should take into account different socio-economic contexts, be comprehensive, cover all relevant sources, sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases and adaptation, and comprise all economic sectors. Efforts to address climate change may be carried out cooperatively by interested Parties.

It is noted here that sources, sinks and reservoirs of greenhouse gases are required to be monitored as a part of determining policies and measures to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change.

Article 4.1 states:

1.... All Parties, taking into account their common but differentiated responsibilities and their specific national and regional development priorities, objectives and circumstances, shall:

(A).... Develop, periodically update, publish and make available to the Conference of the Parties, in accordance with Article 12, national inventories of anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of all greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol, using comparable methodologies to be agreed upon by the Conference of the Parties;

(b).... Formulate, implement, publish and regularly update national and, where appropriate, regional programmes containing measures to mitigate climate change by addressing anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of all greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol, and measures to facilitate adequate adaptation to climate change;

and

(d)....Promote sustainable management, and promote and cooperate in the conservation and enhancement, as appropriate, of sinks and reservoirs of all greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol, including biomass, forests and oceans as well as other terrestrial, coastal and marine ecosystems.

These clauses require the development of systems to enable data to be collected to meet the reporting requirements in the ratified UNFCCC.

For New Zealand this has meant developing appropriate systems to monitor and report on changes in the carbon pools in soils, forests and scrubland.

The Carbon Monitoring System for (indigenous) forests, scrublands and soils has thus been designed to enable New Zealand to meet its commitments under the UNFCCC and to begin the more robust monitoring required under a ratified Kyoto Protocol.

2.3 Kyoto Protocol

Under the Kyoto Protocol, certain human-induced activities in the land-use, land-use change and forestry sector that remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere (known as carbon "sinks"), namely afforestation, reforestation and reducing deforestation, may be used by Annex I Parties (mainly the industrialised developed countries, including New Zealand) to offset their emission targets. Conversely, changes in these activities that deplete carbon sinks (e.g., an increase in deforestation) will be subtracted from the amount of emissions that an Annex I Party may emit over its commitment period. The scientific uncertainty and complexity surrounding the land-use, land-use change and forestry sector (known as "LULUCF") mean that the implementation details of these provisions need to be worked on further.  Articles 3.3 and 3.4 of the Protocol consider the possible sources and sinks of greenhouse gas emissions that will be considered for reporting purposes.

The main points at stake are:

Defining "afforestation, reforestation and deforestation": While Article 3.3 includes these activities in the scope of the Protocol, it does not define exactly what they encompass. As no common definition of these three terms currently exists, Parties must negotiate an agreed definition that will be used under the Protocol.

Additional human-induced activities: Article 3.4 states that additional human-induced activities in the agricultural soils and LULUCF categories may be added to the three already counted under the Protocol. Parties now need to consider criteria for including new activities in the scope of the Protocol, and which activities should be selected.

A further important task for Parties is to devise guidelines for reporting on the LULUCF sector as part of the greenhouse gas inventories of Annex I Parties under the Protocol. In addition, Article 3.7 allows Annex I Parties to include emissions from land-use change in the calculation of their baseline (mostly 1990) if the land-use change and forestry sector were a net source of greenhouse gas emissions for them in 1990. Parties must decide exactly how this provision will be implemented.

Given the particular need for scientific advice on this issue, the IPCC agreed, following a request by SBSTA 8, to prepare a Special Report on LULUCF.

At COP 4, Parties agreed that COP/MOP 1 should take decisions on the two key issues outlined above, and that the COP would recommend such decisions after the IPCC Special Report had been completed and considered by the SBSTA. At COP 5, Parties endorsed a work programme and decision-making framework on LULUCF to enable these draft decisions for COP/MOP 1 to be recommended at COP 6.

Work has also continued inter-sessionally, with SBSTA workshops on LULUCF held in Rome on 24–25 September 1998, in Indianapolis, USA, on 26–28 April 1999, and in Poznan, Poland, on 10–15 July 2000.

2.4 Latest developments to December 2001

The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Land-use, Land-Use Change and Forestry was formally presented to SBSTA 12 in June 2000.

At SBSTA 13 part I (Lyon, September 2001), Parties worked on a "consolidated synthesis of proposals" prepared by the SBSTA Chairman. The outcome was a document (FCCC/SBSTA/2000/10/Add.2) that included elements for a draft decision, and an annex containing draft text on definitions, eligibility of activities under Article 3.4, accounting, measurement, and reporting. Parties invited the Chairman to develop further the annex to this document for consideration at SBSTA 13 part II in The Hague in November 2000.

In Lyon, the SBSTA also considered country-specific data and information on the LULUCF sector submitted by Parties according to a standard format agreed at SBSTA 12. The SBSTA urged Parties that had not yet submitted complete data to do so by 1 November 2000.

An informal consultation on LULUCF was held in Viterbo, Italy, on 9–11 October 2000.

Negotiations continued in The Hague in November 2000, first at SBSTA 13 part II (in the first week), then at COP 6 (in the second week), with the aim of adopting a decision on LULUCF at COP 6.

COP 6 in The Hague, however, was suspended, and was reconvened in July 2001 in Bonn to conclude the work set down for COP 6.  The resumed COP6 held at Bonn from 16 to 27 July 2001 reached political agreement on a number of outstanding matters in the Kyoto Protocol but did not complete all work on land use, land-use change and forestry.  A draft decision from COP6 was forwarded for adoption to COP7 held in Marrakesh, Morocco, between 29 October to 9 November 2001.

Sufficient agreement was gained at Marrakesh for the development of the Kyoto Protocol to continue and for New Zealand to consider its ratification in the latter half of 2002. An intense process of consultation begun in late 2001.

2.5 Implications of a non-ratified Kyoto Protocol for the Carbon Monitoring System

While a ratified Kyoto Protocol would add further support for the CMS, it is not the reason for it.  The reporting of annual emissions and removals is already required under the UNFCCC and in the land-use change and forestry sector New Zealand has not been fully reporting because it does not yet have in place the data collection systems to do so.  The operational CMS will enable New Zealand to meet its obligations under the UNFCCC more fully and to prepare better for the more rigorous future accounting requirements that may follow resolution of outstanding issues in the international negotiation process.

2.6 Science setting

Several Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) and Universities work in the area of climate change and greenhouse gas research. To develop the carbon monitoring system the two organisations with the most experience in forest production and indigenous management and soil science were engaged because of their expertise, their holdings of relevant databases, their access to other as yet uncollated data, and their current contributory research.

A 5-year working relationship began in 1995 between Landcare Research, Forest Research and the Ministry for the Environment.  The Ministry for the Environment funded the work through the Green Package and worked with a Steering Committee that included representatives from the Department of Conservation, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and, originally, the Ministry for Research, Science and Development.

Databases were assembled, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) layers and maps produced, a number of reports written, and papers published in the international literature.  Although some blind alleys were entered and often deliberately tested along the way, the final path became clear and was subjected to international panel scrutiny and review.

Review comments were addressed in the final 2 years' work and an operational carbon monitoring system delivered to MfE in 2001 that was intended to go operational shortly afterwards. While the core system is essentially in place, it remains to be seen whether the full potential of the system is achieved through its integration with other monitoring requirements, both within MfE and in other Government organisations.

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