EU organic movement’s reply to public consultation on carbon farming initiative
The European Commission invited stakeholders to provide input to a roadmap for the Commission’s initiative aimed at developing sustainable carbon removal solutions, including a carbon farming action plan.
As European organic movement, we replied stressing the land use sector’s crucial role meeting long-term climate objectives. However, we also replied that the focus of climate mitigation should lie on ambitious emission reduction in all sectors. Farming practices standard in organic farming can significantly contribute to soil carbon sequestration while delivering benefits for healthy soils, biodiversity protection, resilience, and climate adaptation.
These are further key points of our feedback:
- The strong interlinkage between biodiversity and climate objectives requires them to be addressed together and explicit safeguards for biodiversity, ecosystem services and animal welfare are needed. Only solutions that also deliver benefits for biodiversity and other environmental objectives should be supported;
- Residual agricultural emissions that remain even after ambitious emission reductions, e.g., methane emissions from livestock or nitrous oxide emissions from soil, could be compensated by carbon sequestration in agricultural soils but not by pure forestry offset;
- Carbon markets should not be a way for other sectors to reduce their net greenhouse gas emissions by action in agriculture and the focus should instead lie on how new and existing public funds, like the Common Agricultural Policy, can be used to best incentivise favourable management practices.
Read our reply on the Commission website.
For more information on climate change and IFOAM Organics Europe’s work on this issue, please visit our dedicated page or contact [email protected]. IFOAM Organics Europe members can find more information on the member extranet and background materials in the arguments database on the member extranet (main messages, arguments/FAQs, visuals & videos).
For information about what you can gain from being a member, read our membership page and contact [email protected].