Abstract
This article analyzes the contested politics of including (and accounting for) land-based mitigation in a post-2020 climate agreement. Emissions from land have been only partially included to date within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol. The Paris Agreement, adopted in December 2015 and “applicable to all” for the post-2020 period, raises the possibility of unprecedented reliance on land-based mitigation. This has significant consequences for furthering both ambition and equity in global climate mitigation efforts. Yet, what are these consequences, and how have they manifested themselves in the existing (pre-2020) multilateral climate regime? What role do accounting rules for land-based mitigation play herein? In addressing these questions, we identify key dimensions of what we term the “governance by expertise” approach taken to land-based mitigation to date, which has served to reduce the environmental integrity of existing (developed country) mitigation efforts. Specifically, we analyze land-use accounting rules as a site of politics and highlight the “technicalization of politics” underway in this realm, which obscures the political implications of how land has been included to date. We conclude by considering whether the Paris Agreement institutionalizes similar dynamics, and the environmental integrity and equity implications of doing so.
Highlights
This article analyzes the contested politics of including land-based mitigation in a post-2020 climate agreement
Emissions from agriculture and land-use contribute roughly a quarter of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (IPCC 2014). These have been only partially included to date in the multilateral climate regime, which is centered around the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol
While the details of these dynamics have been analyzed elsewhere (e.g., Fogel 2005; Fry 2002, 2007), we draw attention to two aspects below: the assumption of fungibility that underpins use of LULUCF to meet developed country Kyoto targets, which entailed a disciplining of scientific knowledge, and offset mechanisms negotiated under the UNFCCC and Kyoto, which assume fungibility and implicate the land sector in developing countries as well
Summary
This article analyzes the contested politics of including (and accounting for) land-based mitigation in a post-2020 climate agreement. Emissions from agriculture and land-use contribute roughly a quarter of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (IPCC 2014) These have been only partially included to date in the multilateral climate regime, which is centered around the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol. Key elements of the Paris Agreement raise the possibility of unprecedented reliance on land-based mitigation This includes the temperature goal to stay ‘‘well below’’ a temperature increase of 2 °C and to ‘‘pursue efforts’’ to limit temperature increase to 1.5 °C over pre-industrial levels (UNFCCC 2015, Article 2.1). In analyzing the complex interplay between the technical and political in this realm, we advance the notion of ‘‘governing by expertise’’ in this article, which we argue has been the dominant approach to including land-based mitigation in the multilateral climate regime to date. We rely on an extensive review of primary and secondary sources, including country submissions to the UNFCCC during 2014-2015 culminating in the Paris Agreement, grey literature, and existing academic analyses
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