The main climate event of the year – COP28: what was said about the agro-industrial complex?

What is COP28?

COP is the United Nations Climate Change Conference, the most important event for climate change negotiations. The negotiations are intended to help implement the provisions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol (KP) and the Paris Agreement (PA).

What does the agro-industrial complex have to do with this?

According to various estimates, global agriculture accounts for 10 to 18% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and up to half of non-CO₂ emissions — methane, which is the gas produced by cows. Methane is a key greenhouse gas that significantly accelerates global warming. According to the Horizons report, methane is 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 100-year horizon.

The COP28 Connection and the Methane-Emitting Agri-Industrial Sector

In 2021, the Global Methane Commitment (GMP) was formulated at COP26 - a collective reduction of global anthropogenic methane emissions by at least 30% by 2030 compared to 2020 levels. More than 100 countries have already joined the GMP, and the largest emitting countries were expected to join at this Conference (in the graph, GMP signatory countries are marked in blue, non-signatories are marked in yellow).

Source: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/top-ten-emitters-of-methane-2021

https://www.globalmethanepledge.org/#pledges

Following COP28, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, countries with significant methane emissions, joined the Global Methane Commitment. In total, more than 150 countries have signed the commitment to date, accounting for slightly more than half of anthropogenic methane emissions. However, there were no more emitters from the top ten signatories to the GMP.

What's in Russia?

The agro-industrial sector, as in most countries, is the main emitter of methane in RUSSIA.

Our emissions structure is also not unique. According to Roshydromet, about 15% of Russian emissions are methane. And agricultural emissions by industry account for 5%.

 Despite the fact that Russia is among the top ten countries in terms of methane emissions, the state does not plan to join the Global Commitment. Why? Experts and politicians focus on domestic legislation. And indeed, local regulations have been actively created recently. The Climate Doctrine has been updated, laws on mandatory greenhouse gas reporting for large emitters have been introduced, and in the main document defining methane emission targets in Russia - the Strategy for the Socioeconomic Development of the Russian Federation with Low Greenhouse Gas Emissions until 2050 - agriculture is mentioned about 10 times.

Conclusions

Despite the fact that Russia refuses to accept many international climate acts and clearly demands sovereignty in these matters, local legislation regulating greenhouse gas emissions is developing. Strategies, doctrines and recommendations are general documents from which specific laws always follow. it is possible to hope that requirements for accounting, reduction and compensation of methane emissions will not appear, but it is better to formulate the environmental agenda of business on the emerging trend and make it your competitive advantage.

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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352186419302330

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9598751/

https://www.woodmac.com/horizons/oil-and-gas-methane-challenge/

https://www.state.gov/us-kazakhstan-joint-statement-on-accelerating-methane-mitigation-to-achieve-the-global-methane-pledge/

https://www.mfa.gov.tm/ru/news/4242

https://energypolicy.ru/perspektivy-rossii-v-snizhenii-vybrosov-metana-i-prisoedinenii-k-globalnomu-soglasheniyu-po-metanu/ugol/2023/13/20/