Suchergebnisse

Achieving climate neutrality primarily requires reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, in addition it requires measures to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and storing carbon in the long term to balance unavoidable residual emissions. A key measure available for countries to achieve this is to maintain and enlarge natural carbon sinks. In this respect, measures to protect and restore coastal ecosystems such as mangrove forests, seagrass meadows and tidal marshes are attracting growing attention as they are important natural marine carbon sinks and store a lot of carbon per unit area in their sediments. Therefore, they are often referred to as "Blue Carbon ecosystems" (BCE). Although the term "Blue Carbon" (BC) is not yet uniformly defined, it is becoming more and more prominent in international climate policy and is being discussed in the context of the (voluntary) carbon market, among other things. This study provides an overview of the use of the term BC in scientific literature and international reports in order to derive a working definition of BC and criteria for identifying BC measures (Chapter 2). In the following chapters we summarize and critically assess positive contributions and limits of the global climate mitigation potential of BCE (Chapter 3) and present a summary of the discussions and the future role of BC in international climate policy (Chapter 4). In Chapter 5, the visibility of BC emissions and removals in national GHG inventories is summarized. Based on these analyses, Chapter 6 provides conclusions and recommendations for the future use of the term BC and summarizes its potential contribution to global climate mitigation.

This report assesses how results-based and action-based funding approaches should be used to promote climate-friendly soil management in Europe to deliver climate mitigation and support the agriculture sector's transition to a net-zero future. We identify considerable potential but also significant challenges of promoting climate-friendly soil management measures with these funding approaches. Both approaches have strengths and weaknesses. Given the interest in offsetting and other crediting approaches, we investigate ten existing carbon crediting mechanisms related to climate-friendly soil management in depth, identifying many shortcomings. Based on our evaluations, we discuss the appropriateness of the two funding approaches to promote different types of climate-friendly soil management measures. We conclude that action-based funding approaches are appropriate for many climate-friendly soil management measures, where non-permanence risks are widespread and must be considered. Result-based (non-offset) funding approaches such as contribution claims and public result-based finance are mostly appropriate for some climate-friendly soil management measures. Offsetting approaches are not an appropriate instrument for funding climate-friendly soil management measures due to environmental integrity concerns (i.e. they will lead to higher aggregate emissions than without using offsetting) arising from non-permanence, additionality, and quantification uncertainty.

This report is an Annex to the report "Funding climate-friendly soil management: Appropriate policy instruments and limits of market-based approaches" which constitutes the final report of the research project "Nature-based solutions for climate protection: market-based instruments to support climate-friendly soil management" (FKZ 3721 42 502 0). It presents the detailed assessment of ten crediting methodologies on climate-friendly soil management measures which the final report builds upon. The rules and methodologies of ten selected crediting methodologies are assessed against a set of guiding questions/indicators. These guiding questions relate to key challenges that need to be taken into account in the design of funding instruments for climate-friendly soil management in order to deliver robust mitigation results that also deliver social and environmental benefits. The guiding questions build upon the methodology for assessing the quality of carbon credits developed under the Carbon Credit Quality Initiative (CCQI) and comprise 1) questions related to general characteristics of the crediting programme, 2) questions related to approaches for quantifying emission reductions or removals, 3) questions related to approaches for assessing additionality, 4) questions related to approaches for addressing non-permanence, 5) questions related to approaches for avoiding double-counting, 6) environmental and social impacts and 7) governance questions. A synthesis of the analysis is included in the final report of the project.

Um ⁠Treibhausgas⁠-Neutralität (THG-Neutralität) bis 2045 zu erreichen, sind die Steigerung der Senkenleistung der Wälder und die Erhöhung des Holzproduktspeichers, basierend auf einer nachhaltigen und effizienten Holznutzung, von herausragender Bedeutung. In dem Faktenpapier wird dargestellt, welche Hebel für den stärkeren Waldklimaschutz und für die Verlängerung der Speicherleistung von Holzprodukten, durch weniger energetische und mehr stoffliche Holznutzung, notwendig sind. Die Zusammenschau bezieht sich auf den neuesten Ergebnissen von Reise et al. (2024) und weiterer Literatur. Der Bericht von Reise et al. (2024) ist Teil eines Projekts im Auftrag des Umweltbundesamts, das vom Öko-Institut, Fraunhofer IEE und Fraunhofer ISI durchgeführt wird (FKZ 3720 41 506 0). Dabei werden in sektorübergreifenden Szenarien Maßnahmen und Instrumente für das Erreichen von THG-Neutralität in 2045 modelliert.

This report summarises key aspects that should be accounted for in the design of policy instruments to support the implementation of climate-friendly soil management measures. It outlines overarching aspects that need to be considered for any type of policy instruments, including land use competition, impacts on soil health, biodiversity impacts, ownership and rights to use of soils and social impacts. Furthermore, aspects that are relevant for all types of results-based funding schemes are elaborated upon, including additionality, determining the SOC content of soils, determining baselines avoiding carbon leakage, addressing non-permanence, jurisdictional vs. project-based approaches and ex-ante vs. ex-post crediting. Particular risks exist for transfer-based mechanisms which are a subset of result-based payment approaches. These challenges must be considered and addressed for policy instruments to deliver robust mitigation through soil carbon.

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) build synergies between biodiversity conservation and societal challenges such as climate change. This paper derives a working definition of NbS based on an evaluation of existing definitions, in particular the IUCN (2016) definition. It comprises the key elements of the existing definitions that we believe to be important to inform the scope of this study. It critically assesses the global mitigation potential of NbS in relevant studies for forests, croplands, grasslands, terrestrial and coastal wetlands as well as settlements. Recommendations for international climate policy are derived. The study finds that it is likely that NbS potentials provided by scientific literature overestimate the realistic potential of NbS for climate change mitigation. This is due to a lack of integrated studies, overly optimistic assumptions on land availability as well as the quality of available information. Furthermore, the influence of measures on GHG fluxes, uncertainties related to carbon fluxes and quantification methodologies as well as climate impacts are not taken into account. The majority of studies evaluating the mitigation potential of NbS focus on the technical mitigation potential. General ecological constraints such as existing threats to ecosystems, and biodiversity impacts, land use conflicts and other social, cultural and political barriers as well as the risk of non-permanence further limit mitigation potentials. The success of NbS to mitigate climate change and deliver ecological and social co-benefits will very much depend on eliminating direct and indirect pressures on ecosystems caused by current patterns of production and consumption. Nevertheless, the uncertainties related to the quantification of mitigation effects of NbS should not be used as an argument against their implementation. Neither should they be used as an excuse to delay ambitious mitigation action to reduce emissions. In the UNFCCC negotiation process, information on NbS in biennial transparency reports may serve as a basis for technical discussion to improve methodologies and indicators to assess how NbS contribute to achieving NDCs and to make further financial support available. In implementing activities under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, the specific risks related to NbS must be taken into account. In the development of processes or support schemes to foster NbS, social and environmental safeguards need to be put in place. Coherence with work under other international policy frameworks such as the other Rio Conventions is required to foster synergies.

This report assesses options for the effective implementation of sustainable development impact assessment, in the context of climate change mitigation mechanisms such as those of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. Existing carbon crediting programmes were analysed to draw insights on the best approaches for sustainable development impact assessment and the use ofindicators.The requirements of sustainable development assessment cannot be generalised,but rather the appropriate complexity, rigour and granularity shoulddepend on the rationale of the programme with regards to the intended use of the assessment results and potential commodification of outcomes.More complex and rigorous approaches to sustainable development impact assessment may help to improve understanding of the project impact, but may also result in additional transaction coststhat could be unnecessary for some purposes.From the analysis of existing project-level indicators for sustainable development impact assessment, we derive lessonsand pragmatic solutionsfor the effective use of indicators and measures to decrease complexity and associated transaction costswhile safeguarding a reliable assessment of the sustainable impact of activities. This includes a discussion on the provision of flexibility in MRVapproaches, as well as the identification ofpotential links to internationally accepted benchmarks and accessible data sources, amongst other solutions.We set outa criteria based checklist for the formulation of objective and comparable indicators and assess whethe rexisting indicators can be optimized with regards to their specificity and the type of expression in their formulation.Lastly, we assess approaches for safeguarding against potential negative impacts, finding that stakeholder consultation and grievance mechanisms are essential to identify and respond to unforeseen negative impacts, and that pre-defined indicators are useful yet not alone sufficient towards that objective.

Welche Treibhausgasminderung bis 2030 sieht das ⁠UBA⁠ als notwendig an? Und wie können diese erreicht werden? Aus Sicht des Umweltbundesamtes sollte eine Minderung der Treibhausgasemissionen in Deutschland bis 2030 um mindestens 70 Prozent und bis 2040 um mindestens 90 Prozent gegenüber 1990 erreicht werden. Dieses Papier zeigt die dafür notwendigen Schritte und ebnet den nachhaltigen Weg in ein treibhausgasneutrales Wirtschaftssystem. Es werden für die Bereich Energie, Verkehr, Gebäude, Industrie, Landwirtschaft und ⁠LULUCF⁠ (Senken) sektorübergreifende und sektorspezifische Klimaschutzmaßnahmen und -instrumente erörtert, die schnellstmöglich zu implementieren sind, um diese Minderungsziele zu erreichen.