Why the Emissions Gap Report 2022 has raised alarm on climate action

What does the 2022 Emissions Gap Report say?

The annual report assesses the gap between the pledges taken by different countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the estimated reduction required to maintain the average global temperature rise to below 2°C, preferably 1.5°C, by the end of this century.

The flagship report is managed by the UNEP Copenhagen Climate Centre. It serves as a “scientifically authoritative source of timely and policy-relevant information to key decision-makers,” guiding the UNFCCC process and implementing the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement, adopted by 196 countries in 2015 at COP 21, was aimed at limiting global warming and maintaining the average global temperature rise, ideally, to below 1.5°C.

According to the 2022 report, the national pledges taken by countries since last year only make a “negligible difference” to predicted 2030 emissions. These pledges or the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), only reduce the emissions by 1 per cent by the end of the decade.

With the current policies, the global temperature is expected to rise by 2.8°C by the end of this century, and emissions should be cut down by 45 per cent globally to maintain the goal temperatures. It emphasised transformative solutions across sectors, including food systems.

Why focus on the food systems industry?

Food systems comprise all food products, derived from crop and livestock production, forestry, fisheries, and the larger socio-economic systems surrounding them. While other sectors are dominant in the global climate action plans, food systems are neglected. This often prevents the people from recognizing emissions produced as a result of their consumption and production patterns, as well as of livestock.

In a first, New Zealand recently planned to tax agricultural emissions, which includes those from livestock burps and waste, in an attempt to “transition to a low emissions future” and fulfil its promise “to price agriculture emissions from 2025,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern stated on October 11.

New Zealand is one of the world’s largest exporters of dairy and meat products. However, the agricultural production processes result in significant greenhouse gas emissions. Mostly, biogenic methane and nitrous oxide are responsible for about half of New Zealand’s gross emissions, hence a pricing mechanism will be introduced to achieve the emissions reduction target by 2050.

What are livestock emissions?

Emissions from livestock mainly include carbon dioxide (from urea), nitrous oxide (from livestock dung and urine), and methane (from belching) among others. They contribute towards the greenhouse effect as due to these gases, heat gets trapped around the surface of the earth and causes global warming.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of gases is a metric that helps measure “the radiative effect (determined by the ability to absorb energy) of each unit of gas” over a specific period of time such as 100 years, “as expressed relative to the radiative effect of carbon dioxide.”

Through GWP, we know gases such as nitrous oxide and methane produce more heat around the earth’s surface than carbon dioxide or CO2, which is taken as a reference. It absorbs more energy than CO2 but stays in the atmosphere for a shorter duration. Over a 20-year-period, it has 80 times more GWP than that carbon dioxide, according to the UNEP website.

How are these gases produced by the agriculture industry?

While nitrous oxide is emitted through livestock dung and urine, and carbon moves in the atmosphere in various forms, looking at the production of methane gives us a better insight into effective ways in which countries can tackle climate change. Manure and gastrointestinal releases account for about 32 per cent of human-caused methane emissions. In the livestock sector, popular belief says cow flatulence is a bigger source of methane than cow belching.

However, NASA claims that’s not entirely true. The process of cow belching releases more methane into the environment due to enteric fermentation, a digestive process where complex sugars are converted into simpler molecules to be absorbed into the bloodstream, producing methane as a by-product. Whenever a farm animal digests food, methane is released into the atmosphere.

Further, the cultivation of paddy, which floods the fields, prevents oxygen from penetrating the soil and creates suitable conditions for methane-emitting bacteria. This accounts for roughly 8 per cent of human-linked emissions, the official UNEP website highlights.

An IPCC research showed methane is responsible for at least a quarter of today’s global warming. An assessment by the UNEP and Climate and Clean Air Coalition in 2021 found that cutting human or farming-related methane emissions by “45 per cent this decade” is key in the global battle against climate change.

At COP 26 last year, China as one of the biggest emitters of methane entered a bilateral agreement with the US for reducing methane emissions. Talking about carbon, the US highlighted that it would become 100 per cent carbon-free by 2035, and China promised to phase down its coal consumption, beginning in 2025.

However, environmental activists and civil society called the Glasgow Climate Pact adopted at the end of the Conference a “weaker-than-expected agreement.” With the latest report, all eyes are on COP27 in Egypt, with a focus on climate adaptation, climate finance and transition to assist countries that are most affected by climate change.