Riedacker, Arthur C. (INRA, 63 Bd, de Brandebourg, 94205, Ivry Cedex, France;

Phone: 33 672 39 76 46; Fax: 33 1 46 70 41 13; Email: a.riedacker@wanadoo.fr)

Short term and long-term approaches to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from “Land use, Land Use Change, Bioproducts & Transport “ systems

Arthur C. Riedacker INRA*, Joseph A. Racapé MIES

Under the Kyoto Protocol annual greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) of France are to return to the 1990 level during the first commitment period. However to stabilize GHG concentrations in the atmosphere global anthropogenic GHG emissions at the global level are to be divided by 2 at the turn of the middle of this century, or a little later. An equitable North South burden sharing may therefore require to stabilize emissions in developing countries and to divide them by 4 in industrialized countries.

UNFCCC GHG inventories) allocating emissions by sectors were designed for international negotiations. This approach is useful for industrial sectors but inappropriate to find out the appropriate policies and measures to be considered when dealing with sources and sinks for food and non food bioproducts related with land use, land use change, their production, conversion and transport. For the latter system, emissions and avoided emissions need a comprehensive spatial, (cropland grassland forests and other land), temporal (from 10 to 100years) and integrated (of agriculture, forestry, energy, raw material etc.) approach; the “LU, LUC, B & T” approach (for the “Land Use, Land Use Change, Bioproducts and Transport approach). An even more comprehensive approach should also take into account other environmental (water and atmospheric pollutions, biodiversity etc.), cultural and socioeconomic concerns for sustainable development.

First we consider emissions reduction options under the “UNFCCC” approach and its limitations, in particular for France. In a second step we consider a narrow “LU, LUC, B & T” approach, in which only within countries emissions are taken into account. At a further stage international exchanges and transportations are of course also to be considered. The primary objective is to allow farmers to assess “on farm” options (modelling) under these two approaches and to allow also policy makers to propose adequate policies and measures.

A more long term objective, taking into account the mid century objective of stabilisation of GHG concentrations in the atmosphere and sustainable development, will have to consider more drastic reductions. We suggest that this needs probably at least a four-pronged approach taking into account, inter alia, possible technological changes, technical limitations as well as cultural habits;

- “top down approaches” in agriculture and forestry and use derived products, e.g. reductions of net emissions of various sub-systems (in crop production, livestock production, forestry, bioenergy and biomaterial production etc.);

- “bottom up approaches”, taking into account socio-economical and technical limitations of changes in land use, in land use changes, conversion and use of bioproducts from various agro and forestry systems, in particular in constrained eco-socio-systems such as mountainous regions, semi arid regions etc.;

- “end users approaches”, starting from the basic needs of bioproducts by end users such as food (calories, proteins, lipids), energy (bioenergy and others) and materials (construction wood, green steel, latex etc.);

- and finally a “global economical” modelling.