[Pil-pc-oceania] Farmers urged to be part of carbon emissions trading (Farmonline)

[Deb Guildner]

MadGE - Mothers Against Genetic EngineeringBreaking Rural News : AGRIBUSINESS AND GENERAL  
     
     Farmers urged to be part of carbon emissions trading 
      Australia
      Wednesday, 12 December 2007 

      THE farm sector should waste no time in being part of an emissions trading scheme, according to the former head of ABARE, Dr Brian Fisher, because farmers are going to have to bear the costs of emissions trading whether they're part of a scheme or not.
      In Canberra last week Dr Fisher, who was the executive director or ABARE (the Australian Bureau of Resource Economics) until September last year, said Australian agriculture would be swept up in the same way as some other industries in Europe that were not part of an emissions trading scheme, and urged farmers to be part of the debate and scheme from the start.

      Former Prime Minister, John Howard, last year announced details of an emissions trading scheme for Australia to commence in 2012 but the scheme initially excluded agriculture - a move welcomed by farm lobby groups.

      Labor has made it clear it wants farmers to be part of a scheme but the difficulty surrounding the accounting of agriculture's emissions, particularly methane from livestock, has often put agriculture's participation in a scheme in the too-hard-basket.

      Dr Fisher said he expects a big debate on emissions trading at a World Trade Organisation (WTO) level before too long.

      He alluded to tensions rising in countries that have emissions trading schemes under the Kyoto protocol who are competing for trade with developing countries (currently not part of Kyoto), adding it's unlikely there will be much progress in the short term with developing countries taking on targets.

      But Dr Fisher said further to that is the experience in Europe which Australian farmers must pay close attention to.

      "There's been this discussion about agriculture being excluded as a sector from emissions trading," he said.

      "When you look at what's happened in Europe to those sectors that have been excluded they ended up getting screwed, to put not to fine a point on it.

      "Basically what happens if you're excluded is you weren't in the game of having permit allocations, so you were dealt out of that game, yet you still had the costs associated with an emissions trading scheme."



     
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://jasper.cmsarchitects.com/pipermail/pil-pc-oceania/attachments/20071213/bf3928d2/attachment.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 43 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://jasper.cmsarchitects.com/pipermail/pil-pc-oceania/attachments/20071213/bf3928d2/attachment.gif