13.3.5.1 Agriculture and climate change

Agriculture can play a major role in climate change mitigation: by reducing its own emissions and by increasing the storage of carbon in plants and the soil. Reductions would certainly make a difference because agriculture adds up to "about one third of the total carbon dioxide emissions and is the largest source of methane (from livestock and flood rice production) and nitrous oxides (primarily from application of inorganic nitrogenous fertilizer)."1 Certain agricultural projects are eligible for carbon credits ( PES from agriculture' ). Presently, the efforts to use agriculture to reduce carbon emissions focus on an increase in above-ground sequestration'. This process involves the absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through trees, plants and crops and ultimately storing it as carbon in biomass.2 Also reforestation can produce carbon credits. For example, when infertile lands are transformed into forest, growing trees sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it as woody biomass and soil organic matter; as a result carbon is being sequestered. The new carbon market aids farmers and landowners in receiving payments for land use practices that generate carbon offsets for the buyers. Yet, "around 100 megatons of carbon have been sequestered through voluntary payments to landowners in the framework of private-sector programmes, many of whom are in developing countries."3