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Carbon farming

#Foreword

France intends to take advantage of its presidency of the Council of the European Union to make progress on carbon farming, i.e. paying farmers for the carbon they store in their soils. This is one of the European priorities of the French Minister of Agriculture, who is organizing a series of high-level events on this topic including a meeting with all its European counterparts early next week. Carbon farming is not new in France, which in 2018 adopted its "Label Bas Carbone" (low carbon standard) to allow farmers to certify and then sell carbon credits. It even has become a topic in the French presidential election, with some candidate making it their flagship proposal for the ecological transition of agriculture.

Carbon farming is not just a French issue however. On December 15, the European Commission made public its proposals for remunerating the carbon stored by farmers and building a European carbon certification framework.

We must welcome these initiatives, because agriculture is far from being on the road to carbon neutrality and current public policies remain insufficient. But we must also be vigilant. If the future European certification and remuneration system only focuses on stored carbon and not on other greenhouse gases from agriculture, it could have counterproductive effects. And if European agriculture ministers are counting on carbon offsetting and the purchase of carbon credits from farmers to finance the agricultural transition, they are likely to be disappointed. These are some of the points of vigilance that you will discover this week in the I4CE newsletter.

#I4CExpertViewPoint

Remunerating farmers for their stored carbon, Europe’s good idea?

In this post, Claudine Foucherot from I4CE analyzes the European Commission's proposals in favor of "carbon farming". She considers as positive the construction of a European carbon certification framework, which should allow the Commission to rely more on obligations of result, but highlights three points of vigilance, based on the experience of the Label Bas Carbone.

#ClimateBrief

Design principles of a carbon farming scheme
Climate change is only one of the challenges facing agriculture. In this joint Policy Brief, IDDRI and I4CE identify several conditions for the European agricultural carbon offsetting and carbon certification scheme to support the objectives of the EU’s “Farm2Fork” strategy and the EU’s biodiversity strategy.

#FlashFromThePast

Will the obligation of environmental results green the CAP?
For too many actors, carbon certification rhymes with carbon credits and offsetting. However, certification could also be used to guarantee the climate effectiveness of public funding, and in particular of CAP subsidies. It would allow a shift from an obligation of means to an obligation of result. Is the changeover too complex and costly? This is not the case, as shown by this I4CE study published in 2020.

Webinar I Carbon certification : lessons learned from the French Standard
Never heard of the Label Bas Carbone? The replay of this webinar is made for you. You will discover the history of this label, which I4CE helped launch with many of partners. You will also discover the objectives of the label, the principles of its functioning and the lessons learned from it.

Promoting and reporting on climate action carried out within the framework of the Label Bas Carbone
In the context of the Label Bas Carbone, one of the recurring questions from potential financiers of certified projects is: "What am I allowed to say and do when financing certified low carbon projects? With this publication, I4CE provides operational and pragmatic answers.

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