Abstract
An important element in the local shaping of a low-carbon economy, as well as one of the key areas of activity in communal plans for its development should be rural areas and their related agricultural activities. This is due on the one hand to the significant share of agriculture in total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Poland (on average about 8%, locally as much as 20-50%), and on the other hand to the high potential of rural areas to use their resources to increase carbon sequestration in biomass and soil, reduce GHG emissions, as well as use agricultural activity for the development of renewable energy. The paper, based on the results of mathematical modelling of GHG emission from agricultural sources in all Polish communes, attempts to regionalize the needs of integrating agriculture and rural areas into the development of low-carbon economy at the local level. For this purpose, the guiding factors for regionalisation of the needs for mitigation actions were determined, and a regionalisation of these needs as well as a typology of the distinguished regions were, consequently, developed. The regions with the most urgent needs for mitigation actions were indicated, as well as the directions of mitigation actions for particular types of regions.
Highlights
Agriculture has been identified as one of the main contributors to atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs) on a global scale with about 14% of global GHG emissions coming from this sector (IPCC 2013)
According to the data presented in the Poland’s National Inventory Report 2019 (KOBiZE 2019), the total share of GHG emissions from agriculture in Poland is 7.7%. It is slightly lower than in many other European countries, which results from the fact that the Polish economy is based on coal and the role of energy industries in total emissions
There is, an urgent need to draw attention to the role and importance of agriculture and rural areas in the development of low carbon economy at the local level, and to identify activities in these areas, aiming at reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and improvement of the ability to absorb CO2, which can be broadly applied in the planning of low carbon development of communes
Summary
Agriculture has been identified as one of the main contributors to atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs) on a global scale with about 14% of global GHG emissions coming from this sector (IPCC 2013). Based on the results of mathematical modelling of GHG emissions from agricultural sources carried out earlier by the authors in all Polish communes and its presentation using GIS (Wiśniewski & Kistowski, 2019), this paper attempts to regionalize the needs of including agriculture and rural areas in the development of low-carbon economy at the local level. For this purpose, the guiding factors for the regionalisation of the needs of mitigation measures were determined, and a regionalisation of these needs as well as a typology of the distinguished regions were developed. Differentiating them according to the structure and size of GHG emissions into individual sources will increase the effectiveness of local low-carbon policies and optimise the costs of reducing emissions
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