Agriculture, Soils and Forestry Archive

Around 10 children stand on a field and listen to a man pointing on a fruit tree.

28. March 2019News reportAgriculture, Soils and Forestry, AwarenessItaly

CO2-Neutral Vegetables from Sicilian School Gardens

School classes around Mount Etna opened the second phase of the project ‘Frutti per la Biosfera’ and planted vegetables in the school garden.

Children get explained plants buy a man out side in a field.

YouTube/Screenshot

30. January 2019Agriculture, Soils and Forestry, AwarenessItaly

Project video: Boschi per la Biosfera in Sicily

Sicilian schoolchildren planted 2,497 trees as part of the “Boschi per la Biosfera – Forests for the Biosphere” project.

This policy brief explains the importance of greenhouse gas emissions from organic soils, describes recent policy frameworks, discusses weaknesses in the National Inventory Submissions of EU countries, and provides recommendations to improve reporting. The publications is a result of the EUKI project on Paludiculture.

(c)pixabay.com

14. November 2018Agriculture, Soils and ForestryDenmark, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Romania

INVESTIGATE – Improving National GHG Inventories for Organic Soils and Mitigation Potential

(c)pixabay.com

Project

INVESTIGATE will set up a consortium of relevant partners (European partners from research and implementing institutions) and conduct the network and capacity building for knowledge transfer on improving national GHG inventories for organic soils in different European countries. The GHG mitigation potentials from drained organic soils are little perceived. INVESTIGATE will tackle scientific and technical issues with respect to reporting GHG emissions and prepare the integration and application of innovative outcomes and new technologies in national GHG inventories. The project will enhance expertise sharing and cross-border dialogue between UNFCCC reporting bodies and leading peatland scientists within and between strategically selected EU countries. Cooperation with regard to GHG accounting and emission reductions from rewetting will be fostered within the entire EU.

Photo: pixabay.com

Background

Organic soils (including peatlands) on only 3% of the global land area contain more carbon than the entire forest biomass. If drained, the organic soil material is oxidized and released as GHGs to the atmosphere. In Europe, c. 275,000 km² of organic soils are drained. The European Union (EU) is, after Indonesia, responsible for the largest peatland emissions worldwide. In the Nordic and Baltic states, drained peatlands account for 25% of all national anthropogenic emissions. In spite of this importance, organic soils are insufficiently reported in National Inventory Submissions (NIS), especially because of large uncertainties with respect to activity (area) data and inadequate or unavailable emission factors, especially of specific mitigation measures. Furthermore, organic soil emissions remain unrecognized in climate policies in case of undifferentiated consideration of the land sector, where forest biomass sinks ‘compensate’ for organic soil sources. The split reporting of agricultural emissions over the sectors ‘Agriculture’ and ‘Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF)’ obscures that CO2 emissions from organic soils, i.e. from a minor part of all agriculture land, are of the same size as CH4 emissions from all animal husbandry and N2O emissions from all fertilization.

Project information

Updated: March 2019

Countries: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Romania

Project duration: 11/17 - 10/18

Funding: 116,002 €

Target groups: Governments, NGOs, Research Institutes

Implementing organisation:
DUENE - partner in the Greifswald Mire Centre

Project Partners:
Latvian State Forest Research Institute

Website:
greifswaldmoor.de/glob...

EUKI

The European Climate Initiative (EUKI):

Potsdamer Platz 10,
10117 Berlin – Deutschland
Tel.: +49 (0)30 338424 570
info∂euki.de

The European Climate Initiative (EUKI):

This project is part of the European Climate Initiative (EUKI) of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU). It is the overarching goal of the EUKI to foster climate cooperation within the European Union (EU) in order to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

For more information on the EUKI: www.euki.de

Gábor Kosár

14. November 2018Agriculture, Soils and ForestryBelgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Spain

An Unavoidable Step After Paris: Cutting Emissions from Farming

Through national and European workshops and subsequent communication work, an increased public and political awareness around the need for an ambitious legislative framework on climate and agriculture (national plans, governance and CAP) is going to be created.

pixabay.com

14. November 2018Agriculture, Soils and ForestryEstonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania

Paludiculture in the Baltic Countries – Climate Protection by Productive Use of Rewetted Peatlands

The project will tackle obstacles for implementing climate-friendly peatland management in the Baltic countries by assessing the feasibility to use drained peatlands in paludiculture after rewetting to substitute fossil resources e.g. peat mosses as horticultural substrates or reed as fuel on newly evolved markets for products in the EU.

Andreas Haberl

10. November 2018Interview, News reportAgriculture, Soils and ForestryEstonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania

Interview: Rewetting peatlands to cut emissions

Martti Mandel, as Head of the Agricultural Environment Bureau of Estonia’s Ministry of Rural Affairs, works to join up agricultural and environmental issues. In September 2018 he participated in a study tour, Paludiculture in the European Union, which was organised by the Michael Succow Foundation (MSF) and financed by the German Environment Ministry (BMU) under its European Climate Initiative (EUKI).