Agriculture and Forests

Economic activities in the sectors of agriculture and forest hold significant potential in combating climate change.  To begin with, forests are a source of ‘negative’ greenhouse gas emissions in the sense that CO₂ is consumed in the photosynthesis process. Therefore, every tree cut effectively increases the CO₂ content in the atmosphere – while every tree planted increases the absorption of CO₂.

Agricultural activities are also significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions – particularly livestock activities. To date, no CDM projects have been proposed that reduce emissions at source, e.g. by changing animal feed composition to reduce methane emissions. However, waste from agricultural production, both solid and liquid, has a significant prevalence in CDM projects and can be found in the chapter concerning Waste.

While there is a certain controversy pertaining to fuel crops, in so far as they may compete for land for food production, there are crops that thrive on arid lands and technologies that exploit material from agricultural production that is otherwise regarded as waste. In such cases, the risk of competition is significantly less or non-existent. Charcoal and briquette production are also related to the forest industry and hold the potential for emissions reduction. The following technologies are presented in this section: