The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations The objective of the IPCC is to provide governments with scientific information they can use to develop climate policies. IPCC reports provide summaries of what is known to date about the drivers, impacts and risks associated with climate change, and how adaptation and mitigation can reduce those risks. Unfortunately, these reports are written in a highly technical style appropriate for specialists and are not an easy read for the rest of us. In other words, the IPCC reports can be a real slog to get through. The IPCC really should release parallel reports for the layperson. In lieu of that, I will occasionally post bits and pieces of reports that I’ve found especially interesting or useful.
This is the third in a series of posts based on the 2018 IPCC report, “Mitigation pathways compatible with 1.5°C in the context of sustainable development” - specifically, a multi-page table listing 70 measures that have been represented in the mitigation pathway literature. This post covers agricultural, forestry and other land-use measures, starting with a few definitions*:
Agroforestry: the intentional integration of trees and shrubs into crop and animal farming systems to create environmental, economic, and social benefits.
Silviculture: the practice of controlling the growth, composition/structure, and quality of forests to align with values and achieve goals such as biodiversity and enhanced soil carbon.
Conservation agriculture: a farming system that can prevent losses of arable land while regenerating degraded lands. It increases the amount of carbon in the soil and promotes maintenance of a permanent soil cover, minimum soil disturbance, and diversification of plant species.
Land Albedo: refers to the amount of solar radiation reflected by land surfaces. Snow-covered surfaces have a high albedo, the surface albedo of soils ranges from high to low, and vegetation-covered surfaces and the oceans have a low albedo. The lower the albedo, the more radiation from the Sun that gets absorbed by the planet, and temperatures will rise.
And here are 17 climate change mitigation land-use measures:
Source: Table 2.SM.6 (Section)/2018: Mitigation Pathways Compatible with 1.5°C in the Context of Sustainable Development Supplementary Material. In: Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15 Accessed February 8, 2020
Note that I’m not endorsing some measures over others. None of the above measures are mature technologies (meaning their path to optimality remains strewn with knowledge gaps) and none should be excluded from consideration. As energy systems engineer and Princeton professor Jesse Jenkins put it:
“If we’re really in a ‘climate crisis,’ then you go to war with your full arsenal, you don’t hold anything back. And you don’t purposefully make this crisis harder by limiting our already limited options.”
—
*See the IPCC glossary for additional definitions and explanations.
References:
Forster, P., D. Huppmann, E. Kriegler, L. Mundaca, C. Smith, J. Rogelj, and R. Seferian, 2018: Mitigation Pathways Compatible with 1.5°C in the Context of Sustainable Development Supplementary Material. In: Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, H.-O. Portner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Pean, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J.B.R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M.I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T. Maycock, M. Tignor, and T. Waterfield (eds.)]. Available from https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15
Lawrence, J. and M. Haasnoot (2017). "What it took to catalyse uptake of dynamic adaptive pathways planning to address climate change uncertainty." Environmental Science & Policy 68: 47-57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2016.12.003
Rogelj, J., D. Shindell, K. Jiang, S. Fifita, P. Forster, V. Ginzburg, C. Handa, H. Kheshgi, S. Kobayashi, E. Kriegler, L. Mundaca, R. Séférian, and M.V. Vilariño, 2018: Mitigation Pathways Compatible with 1.5°C in the Context of Sustainable Development. In: Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, H.-O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, W. Moufouma-Okia, C. Péan, R. Pidcock, S. Connors, J.B.R. Matthews, Y. Chen, X. Zhou, M.I. Gomis, E. Lonnoy, T. Maycock, M. Tignor, and T. Waterfield (eds.)]. In Press. https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-2/