Commentary: Agricultural measures for mitigating climate change: will the barriers prevent any benefits to developing countries?

Land use change and soil organic carbon dynamics

“…Current macro-economic frameworks do not currently support sustainable development policies at the local level. Policies to encourage fair trade, reduced subsidies for agriculture in developed countries and less onerous interest on loans and foreign debt would encourage sustainable development, which in turn would provide an environment in which C sequestration could be considered in developing countries (Trines et al 2006;Smith and Trines 2007).…”

“…Even then, there are barriers (e.g. economic, institutional, educational, social) that mean the economic potential may not be realized (Trines et al 2006;Smith and Trines 2007). The estimates for C sequestration potential in soils are of the same order as for forest trees, which have a technical potential to sequester about 1-2 Pg C y -1 (IPCC 1997;Trexler 1988[cited in Metting et al 1999), but economic potential for C sequestration in forestry is similar to that for soil C sequestration in agriculture (IPCC WGIII 2007).…”

“…The most effective mechanism for reducing SOC loss globally would be to halt land conversion to agriculture, but with the population growing and diets changing in developing countries (Smith et al 2007b;Smith and Trines 2007), more land is likely to be required for agriculture. To meet growing and changing food demands without encouraging land conversion to agriculture will require productivity on current agricultural land to be increased (Vlek et al 2004).…”

“…Trines et al (2006) divided these into five categories: economic, risk-related, political/ bureaucratic, logistical and educational/societal barriers. Trines et al (2006) considered barriers preventing a range of agricultural and forestry greenhouse gas mitigation measures (including soil C sequestration) in developed countries, developing countries and countries with economies in transition and Smith and Trines (2007) considered the particular barriers prevalent in developing countries.…”

“…The barriers to implementation of mitigation actions in developing countries need to be overcome if we are to realise even a proportion of the 70% of global agricultural climate mitigation potential that is available in these countries. Since we need to act now to achieve low atmospheric CO 2 /GHG stabilisation targets (IPCC WGIII 2007), overcoming these barriers in developing countries should be a priority (Smith and Trines 2007).…”