The global climate conference opens this weekend in Glasgow with the ambition of agreeing a level of reduction in CO2e gasses that would have the effect of containing temperature increase to 1.5°C.

With the leader of China, the world’s largest single producer of emissions, absent along with Russia, the event is struggling before it even starts.

Additionally, countries like Australia are turning up but with no specific plans on how they will deliver reductions and committed to protect their coal industry and its use.

Meanwhile, South American countries are mobilising to defend their beef industry.

Ireland has among the most ambitious plans for reduction in emissions with a target reduction of 51% enshrined in law.

Achieving this will come at a cost to the Irish economy with transport, construction and energy inevitably going to cost more and a transformation across all these will have to take place.

For agriculture, as the KPMG report released this week reveals, the sector risks severe damage if the level of reductions required go beyond the 18% identified in the KPMG report.

Dilemma

There is a huge dilemma in which approach Ireland should taking. To achieve the overall global objective of reducing emissions, there is a case to be made for every country doing its bit and combined they deliver overall result.

However, this only works if every country does its share of heavy lifting and as already clear some of the bigger contributors aren’t willing to do that.

Ireland has a particularly strong case for treating agriculture separately and yet within Ireland there is a considerable body of opinion that it shouldn’t be.

Ultimately Ireland has high emissions from agriculture relative to other sectors of the economy because we don’t have heavy industry or mining and the only significant natural resources that we have is an abundance of grass and water.

Resources

These are the basis for livestock production and as the world will require additional meat and dairy products in 2030 compared with today, there is strong logic that suggests production should be targeted to parts of the world that have grass and water.

Of course agriculture cannot have a free pass and farmers supported by Government must embrace the technology and practices that are available to deliver an 18% reduction even though that will take huge effort and considerable cost.

There is also a case for combining global effort in research to find further ways of reducing emissions.

New Zealand is investing heavily but ideally livestock producing countries should combine their efforts given the common interest.

However, as with achieving global agreement on climate reduction itself, getting nations to share research can be equally problematic even if reduction of emissions is a global priority.