Author: Catherine Bowyer

The UN Climate Change Conference, COP 23, takes place between the 6 and 17 November. At the end of preparatory meetings for the COP UN Deputy Secretary General Amina J. Mohamed noted that the ‘Paris Agreement represents a turning point in international cooperation to combat climate change’ and noted the ‘enthusiastic support for the Paris Agreement as a key pillar of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’. Ahead of the COP Member’s of the European Parliament stated that the EU needs a 2050 zero carbon emissions strategy and called on the Commission to set this out by 2018. They call on EU leaders to implement the agreement with EU legislation and ratchet up the EU’s goals and policy instruments.

Key to both climate mitigation, adaption and the delivering of Sustainable Development Goals is the management of land. IEEP will be examining ways to promote future dialogue, policy developments and implementation that facilitates more emission reductions from land and land management. IEEP leads two side events examining the implementation of Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) requirements in Member States and evolution of a net zero agriculture sector.

• On 6 Nov (12:00 to 13:00, Zone Bonn, Brussels room), IEEP will present research on Member State implementation of LULUCF commitments, looking to the nature of policy approaches adopted, key policy tools promoting action and next steps. This among other things will look at the role of the Common Agricultural Policy in LULUCF action. 
  
• On 10 Nov (15:00 to 16:30, Zone Bonn, Brussels room), IEEP will examine the call for net zero emissions in 2050 in the context of agriculture. This is part of analysis to bring together actors to develop pathways to net zero by 2050 for the agricultural sector. The event is intended to discuss opportunities and challenges for long-term decarbonisation and increased resilience of the agriculture sector from a variety of perspectives. The goal is to understand what a low-carbon or net-zero emitting agriculture sector could look like, its interaction with other sectors, and the drivers and actions to enable the necessary change.

Meeting the long-term goals of Paris will require more demanding future emissions reductions, and the EU will need a strategic approach to the role agriculture and other land-using sectors in this low carbon transition. The sooner we start this process, the sooner the EU and its land using sectors will be able to develop workable answers to the challenge. This need for action now chimes with demands from Amina J. Mohamed that ‘by the 2019 Climate Summit, we must be able to show that climate action works and that transformation is well under way’.

Do you want to understand Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy Better? Download an IEEP/iSQAPER Briefing explaining the current CAP from the perspective of soil protection and climate below.