ABC pic of Jan Davis
Every quarter, the federal Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency releases its assessment of the current state of play with respect to greenhouse gas emissions. This report is called the National Greenhouse Accounts. If they get it wrong, and there is evidence they do, there are enormous consequences.
The greenhouse accounts are the basis for policy decisions, particularly the price and volume of emission permits that the government makes available. They are also the measure by which Australia reports internationally on its progress in limiting greenhouse emissions.
Therefore, you would think it imperative that their calculations are robust. They have to be. However, the Australian Farm Institute (AFI), whose research positions agriculture within the national policy framework, says the department’s molecule counters have got it wrong when it comes to the emissions associated with agriculture.
The National Greenhouse Accounts for the March quarter indicate that Australian emissions dropped by 0.2 per cent; but that agricultural emissions increased by 3.9 per cent; and that farming now accounts for 16 per cent of national emissions.
The report said: “This increase is driven by increases in enteric fermentation emissions from livestock and emissions from agricultural soils.”
That was caused, it said, by the recovery from the drought that saw more livestock, increased grain production and associated emissions.
The AFI’s Mick Keogh reckons this does not add up – and we reckon he’s right.
“This is somewhat curious, as it would also have been expected that improved seasonal conditions would also have increased pasture growth and hence increased soil carbon levels, rather than decreased them,” he reasoned. He can’t test that because the department’s conclusions are based on estimated data generated through models, not real data.
And everyone knows that models are only as good as the data inputted – garbage in, garbage out.
Further, Keogh says that it is in relation to estimates of emissions arising from land clearing that the real questions about the quality of the National Greenhouse Accounts emerge.
The report says that emissions from deforestation are estimated to have increased by 8.3 per cent in the year to the end of March. It bases this finding on what it believes is a nexus between the rate of land clearing and farmers’ terms of trade, allowing for a one-year lag.
“What this means is that the whole basis for reporting emissions from land clearing is nothing to do with any information about actual rates of land clearing or regrowth, but simply a projection based on an index that is maintained by ABARES, which compares prices received and prices paid by farmers,” Keogh says.
And even then, the figure is a ‘projection’ based on historical clearing rates and ‘projections’ of the farmers’ terms of trade. It does not take into account actual terms of trade; or changes in legislation that have severely curtailed farmers’ ability to clear their own land.
In plain English, that means that agriculture’s supposed rate of land clearing (and therefore emissions) is not based on any mapping or hard data, but on how prices of agricultural commodities are predicted to change from year to year.
To add to the doubt about the veracity of the accounts, farmers’ terms of trade actually decreased in 2010.
This would be risible – but for the fact we’re talking about big bucks. The claimed level of emissions in Australia is 48 million tonnes, which has a potential value of close to $1 billion, based on the $23 emission price that the government has set.
That such a dubious method of assessing emissions can have such profound financial consequences for the nation beggars belief. Even more confounding is that so many supposedly ‘expert’ commentators pass on this stuff as though it were handed down on stone tablets.
So the usual suspects will be up there sprouting the usual line about farmers being environmental vandals, land clearing getting out of hand etc etc. And the people who make decisions that impact on all our lives will accept this as gospel, even though there is absolutely no evidenced based data to back up their assertions.
The emission statistics attributed to agriculture and land clearing are simply not worth the paper they are written on.
We have to do better than this.
