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6.3.2. Additional Human-Induced Activities under Article 3.4
6.3.2.1. Generic Issues on Additional Activities
This section considers the adequacy of the Guidelines to account for changes
in carbon stocks arising from additional human-induced activities in agricultural
soils and LUCF (Chapter 4). Many of the additional activities
under consideration are described in the Guidelines, particularly in the Reference
Manual.
The key issue that emerges from Article 3.4 is the question of which activities
will be included for the purpose of meeting commitments. Chapter
4 notes that the Parties have two broad choices with respect to including
activities under Article 3.4:
- Include a limited, selected set of activities (narrow definition)
- Include all activities that can be shown to have consequences on the atmospheric
concentration of GHGs (broad definition).
Chapter 4 examines effects in reporting, verifiability,
and other issues related to the choice between the narrowly and broadly defined
set of additional human-induced activities that could be included under Article
3.4. Chapter 4 identifies the following categories of
additional human-induced activities that could be included under Article 3.4:
- Cropland management (including agricultural intensification, conservation
tillage, erosion reduction, management of rice agriculture)
- Grazing lands management (including influencing degradation processes, grazing
management, protected grasslands and set-asides, grassland productivity, fire
management)
- Agroforestry (including conversion from forests to slash-and-burn to agroforests
after deforestation, conversion from low-productivity croplands to sequential
agroforestry in Africa, improved agroforests)
- Forest management (including forest regeneration, forest fertilization,
fire management, pest management, harvest quantity and timing, low-impact
harvesting, reducing forest degradation)
- Wetlands management (including wetland conversion to agriculture or forestry,
wetland conversion to urban or industrial land, impoundments, wetland restoration)
- Restoration of severely degraded lands (including salt-affected soils, badly
eroded and desertified soils, mine spoils, and industrially polluted sites)
- Urban and peri-urban land management .
Many of the foregoing land-use and management practices affect the storage
of carbon below ground. Such practices include reduced and no tillage, livestock
grazing, shifting of cultivation, fallow rotation, improved and degraded pastures,
wetland rice, and agroforestry. The Guidelines provide the framework for such
treatment of changes in soil carbon caused by agricultural practices. In addition
to changes associated with clearing native vegetation (described earlier for
deforestation), Section 5.4.2 of the Reference Manual
describes the treatment of the effects of land abandonment, shifting cultivation,
differing residue addition levels, differing tillage systems, and agricultural
use of organic soils. The underlying principles can then be applied to other
activities.
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