The EU’s 2040 climate targets and strategy must prioritise farmers

The EU is already struggling to meet its 2030 climate and energy targets, so it needs to put farmers as well as the social and environmental benefits first in order to project itself forward to 2040, write Zsolt Lengyel and Erica Johnson.

Zsolt Lengyel is Secretary of the Board of the Institute for European Energy & Climate Policy (IEECP). Erica Johnson is External Affairs Manager of Agreena.

Setting ambitious climate targets is great, achieving them is even better. The European Commission can be commended for setting its 2040 aim of a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 1990 levels.

To achieve the target, yesterday the Commission has proposed a significant scale-up of carbon removals on the path to climate neutrality.

Yet before waiving the victory flag for ambition, we must acknowledge that the EU is already struggling to meet the majority of its climate and energy 2030 targets and there are significant policy implementation gaps post-2030.

To avoid continuous shortcomings, we need focused and accelerated climate action and cohesive policies that deliver now. Further, we must ensure objectives are not delivered with carbon tunnel vision but instead, prioritise efforts providing the greatest good for European society, our local economies, and our natural ecosystems for increased resiliency against already baked-in climate change.

The elephant in the room: agriculture 

With farmer protests across Europe, tractors took over the streets of Brussels and pre-election political pressures run deep. With the desire to ensure their business’ profitability and resiliency, farmers are facing significant challenges among geopolitical constraints, climate-related events such as drought and flooding, increased sustainability expectations, and difficulty navigating the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

But what needs to happen in agriculture, is to finally change it. The EU’s agricultural greenhouse gas emissions have hardly decreased since 2005 and currently, the land use sector is very unlikely to meet its 2030 climate target. The transition to sustainable farming practices is long overdue.

In the delivery of the EU’s 2040 targets, stewards of the land should be put at the top of the stakeholder agenda to be successful in restoring our natural soil carbon reservoirs which have been depleted from decades of industrial agricultural practices.

The role of carbon removals

We will need both GHG emission reductions and carbon dioxide removals (CDR) to address hard-to-abate sectors and legacy emissions to achieve global net zero targets.

The European Commission has made a historic attempt to define CDR targets going beyond the long-existing focus on land use sector carbon sinks to achieve its 90% reduction target. It is important to note that land-based CDR cannot be used to balance or offset continuing fossil fuel emissions.

The EU has built out a gargantuan target to store 280 million tonnes of industrial CO2 per annum by 2040 and a carveout to remove 75 million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere using engineering. To put in perspective, the current total global capacity of carbon capture and storage (CCS) is around 40 million tonnes of CO2 with three-quarters being used for enhanced oil recovery (EoR).

Subscribing to a technology-open CDR policy is logical to implement in alignment with science and economics, and least-cost pathways should be pursued with rigour. Creating targets at the EU level for carbon capture and removal technologies (e.g. BECCS, DACCS) which require significant future infrastructure development and investment, with uncertain social and ecological implications, could delay needed emission reductions and divert attention and resources.

Beyond carbon: environment and society-at-large

Beyond varying cost differences for the climate mitigation efforts, the impacts, risks and co-benefits of CDR deployment for ecosystems, biodiversity and people are highly variable depending on the method, site-specific context, implementation and scale. In contrast to  other types of CDRs, land-based biological carbon removals can enhance biodiversity and ecosystem functions, employment and local livelihoods.

While there is no “silver bullet” in carbon removals, we must prioritise an evidence-based, socially just, and people-led strategy in the delivery and execution of plans as they unfold.

Soil as a holistic solution for climate action

Protecting and restoring natural soil carbon sinks and enhancing their capacity for biological carbon sequestration is necessary to create healthy soils for a sustainable food and agriculture system.

By supporting farmers in their transition to practices that regenerate their soils, we can achieve both deep emission cuts and accelerate carbon sequestration which has the feasibility and readiness to deliver now in supporting our already lagging 2030 targets.

Beyond decarbonisation, agricultural soils should be placed priority on the strategic plan’s implementation for the holistic benefits to society at large. Healthy soils are the most biodiverse ecosystem on the planet and create more nutritious food for all.

Extending beyond mitigation, we can create durability for the farmer’s pocketbook and the climate – with co-benefits building resiliency from flooding and droughts – which in turn, supports food security so our farmers can continue feeding a growing population.

Setting a ‘farmers first’ agenda

We have abdicated our farmers economically and politically and systematically undermined nature and climate through unsustainable, industrialised agricultural practices which have contributed to transgressing multiple planetary boundaries.

Targets have been set for the land use sector to restore carbon sinks, and we must ensure that we prioritise our farmers with serious acknowledgement that they are managing the fields which make this possible.

Farmers need to have a seat at the political table and meeting net zero targets should come from synergistic mechanisms and collaboration. Their calls for navigating the CAP with ease need to be met, and knowledge and financial barriers must be overcome. Similar to the energy transition, the upfront costs of transforming agricultural practices is significant, but provide long-term gains.

Agriculture’s transformation needs a ‘financing green – greening finance’ approach: from a revision of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and additional incentives and revenues generated through carbon markets, every cent counts to mobilise farmers and support them with the burdensome upfront costs of new equipment and risks associated with making their transition.

It is critical that this transformation and the pathway to net zero is just, with farmers provided access to fair market value for the valuable ecosystem services they provide. Recognising farmers as the stewards of the land who are sustaining us all – we must as policymakers, businesses, financiers, carbon credit buyers, and civil society – work together to prioritise them and support their transition with acceleration.