Estimating and mitigating agriculture GHG emissions: Uncertainties and policy reforms

Global climate change has been one of the challenging environmental concerns facing policy makers in the past decade. The characterization of the wide range of greenhouse gas emissions sources and sinks as well as their behavior in the atmosphere remains an on-going activity in many countries. Lebanon, being a signatory to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, is required to submit and regularly update a national inventory of greenhouse gas emissions sources and removals. Accordingly, an inventory of greenhouse gases from various sectors was conducted following the guidelines set by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The inventory indicated that the agriculture sector contributes about seven percent to the total greenhouse gas emissions. This paper proposes mitigation scenarios to reduce emissions from this sector based on country-specific technical, economic and environmental characteristics. Economic evaluation and uncertainty in the emission estimation process as well as policy reforms are also addressed in the context of agricultural emissions reduction.