CFA disappointed with Achieving 2050: A Carbon Pricing Policy for Canada report

April 20, 2009 -- The Canadian Federation of Agriculture (CFA) was disappointed to see many of the recommendations put forth in the recently released National Round Table on the Environment and Economy (NRTEE) report, Achieving 2050: A Carbon Pricing Policy for Canada. 

Although the CFA is encouraged by the NRTEE's support for a national cap-and-trade system, it is deeply discouraging to see the report recommend that domestic carbon offsets should be phased out of the cap-and-trade system by 2015.  Instead, the report suggests that agricultural emissions should be addressed through complementary regulations and technology policies. 

"This report demonstrates a deep misunderstanding of carbon offsets from agriculture and how important they can be for Canada's long-term climate change solution," said Laurent Pellerin, CFA President. "If given the proper price signals, Canadian agriculture can be a permanent and important carbon offset supplier within the cap-and-trade system."

Canadian farmers have been at the forefront of carbon mitigation and sequestration for years through the implementation no-till farming to sequester carbon and improved manure management practices. 

"These agriculture techniques and practices have been entrenched in verifiable agricultural offset protocols that have been developed for the Alberta Carbon Market and work has already been undertaken to adopt them for a national system," says Pellerin.

The conclusions of the NRTEE report are particularly troublesome considering the growing calls both within the USA and internationally that agricultural carbon offsets will be an important part of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. 

"The USA has been strongly promoting the development of markets that will remunerate farmers for the carbon offsets they provide and that this is a long term solution to increasing farm income," Pellerin said.  "The NRTEE report discusses increased continental and international carbon market harmonization but then proceeds to recommend the elimination of domestic carbon offsets from the market by 2015, this goes against growing international consensus on the role of agriculture." 

Recently, the CFA attended an agriculture workshop in Bonn, Germany  hosted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).  The workshop was an official event during the meetings being conducted to develop a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.  At the workshop, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated that the Kyoto protocol neglected the mitigation potential in agriculture and that globally, carbon sequestration could provide between 1-4 billion t CO2/year depending on the market price of carbon.  This represents 11-17% of total mitigation potential and there is growing international recognition that the best and most efficient way to realize this is through market mechanisms.

"The work Canadian agriculture has done to develop offset protocols is an excellent example of how agriculture can play and essential part within a carbon market and the CFA made this point clear in Bonn," said Pellerin. "It is extremely disappointing that the NRTEE report chose not to recognize the long term potential of domestic agricultural offsets."