What Carbon Farmers Want

The Carbon Farming & Trading Association Wants the Government to:

• Take immediate action to agree a baseline methodology so farmers can start the process of sequestration without waiting 10 or 15 years for peer-reviewed science (at current rate of progress)

• Invoke UNFCCC Precautionary Principle: ‘Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing such measures.’

• Extend the precedent set by the DCCEE’s 5% “Risk of Reversal Buffer” to a statistically robust ‘Project Buffer Pool System’ that can replace peer-reviewed science as a means of managing uncertainty arising from measurement and permanence requirements of the Carbon Farming Initiative.

• Accept the ‘Project Buffer Pool System’ as meeting all technical requirements of Carbon Farming Initiative: A 1:1 buffer on a 15cm profile makes available for risk management the carbon stored in the corresponding 15cm unit plus that stored in the 15cm-30cm profiles of both units plus that stored in the 30cm-100cm profiles. A 75% buffer represents 95% confidence interval (certainty).

• Accept that Project Buffer Pool on 25 year contract enables system to meet Kyoto 75 year permanence requirement.

• Demand similar practical innovation from government agencies tasked with finding ways to make soil C sequestration work rather than reasons why it can’t work.