Jeremy's Blog 11th November 2022: We Must Learn to Mitigate
This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 10th November 2022
As COP26 slides into COP27 with COP28 doubtless to follow, the language of climate change and the high level commitments become ever more familiar but the scale of its impact, what might be required to mitigate it and what we might have to do to adapt to it have yet to impress themselves on the public mind.
At one level, it is evident that the real heavy lifting has to be done by the major corporate emitters, not by the splintered cottage industry of offsetting in the UK. They have the scale to deliver the major change required for the economy to move decisively toward net zero. That also follows the rule that mitigation should first focus on reducing emissions, then on countering them within the business and only last looking to offset them elsewhere.
Moreover, they rely on the finance markets with the decisions of investment houses, lenders and asset managers. It appears that just 10 finance houses are major shareholders in half the world’s unburnt fossil fuels. As big business and finance increasingly act and reporting standards rise, so their demands ripple down the supply chains to affect all, as the corporates become required to expect reduced emissions from their suppliers, including farmers. And so, whether in Morrisons in Yorkshire or in ASDA, we already see eggs labelled as net zero, an early step in a trend that will influence all.
Nonetheless, agriculture at 0.5 per cent of GDP is responsible for 8 to 10 per cent of the UK’s emissions, more in Scotland and Ireland. Farming will need to reduce that for itself, not others. More comes from land use, notably from peat. For a sector with a typical annual economic and production cycle, there are just 27 harvests to 2050, perhaps 5 generations of dairy cows. Managing this sensibly is today’s problem.
Whether changes might be in larger land uses, production methods, cattle numbers and the rise of indoor agriculture (included in the new Welsh Bill’s suggested definition of agriculture), many default to seeing such changes as alien. Yet more pressures in a less stable world, the productivity gains needed for food security and the changing climate will require greater change. Can we manage it rather than be managed by it?
The targets framing Scotland’s future agricultural policy make this more stark, with talk of transformation and required culture change. Scottish agriculture is expected to cut its emissions by 31 per cent by 2032 – now 10 years away and with less the half the means to do this identified. Scotland’s 2045 net zero target is only 13 years after that. Subsidies are to become conditional on relevant measures but only at the earliest from 2025. That tightening timetable makes it hard to avoid the sense that changes deferred will be more disruptive when they come. The EU is now allowing some CAP money to be diverted to support renewables.
This comes to the real world of trade-offs between objectives, including competition between land uses. Oddly, many of those strongest on climate “crisis” can seem least urgent about driving the changes it requires or accepting its disruption; at its worst the “just transition” can be an evasion. Whether looking at productivity or climate change, the mood is too often to stay in our bubble, discounting the future to stay comfortable now.
Beyond this is what will happen anyway with much more climate change already to come – this summer but a herald – and learning how to adapt to very different conditions. Mitigating now would reduce what that might impose.