Could soil carbon sequestration ever be a worthwhile climate policy?

Date

Time

11:00am - 12:00pm AWST

Venue

Online

Speakers

Dr David Pannell

Description

AARES WESTERN AUSTRALIA PUBLIC LECTURE

Could soil carbon sequestration ever be a worthwhile climate policy?

Join the AARES WA branch for this public lecture to be held on Friday 20 May 2022 by Professor David Pannell.

ABSTRACT
Paying farmers to sequester carbon in agricultural soils is widely seen as a useful policy response to combat climate change. However, the approach has some serious challenges. If the policy accounts well for the technical complexities of soil-carbon sequestration, the revenues received by farmers will be small and will make little difference to their farming decisions. There is a high risk of paying farmers for doing things that they would have done anyway, despite existing policy measures intended to avoid this. Even if the current high cost of measuring soil carbon can be substantially reduced, this will not be sufficient to overcome the other technical and economic challenges. Could a policy based on paying farmers to sequester carbon ever be worthwhile in Australia? Probably not. What, then, are the alternatives?

ABOUT THE LECTURE SERIES

The Environmental Policy Lecture is an initiative of the Western Australian Branch of the Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society (AARES WA), The University of Western Australia Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy (CEEP), and The UWA Centre of Agricultural Economics and Development (CAED). Each year, we will invite a leading national and international speaker to discuss important environmental or natural resource issues. The series will also provide the opportunity for students, academics, policy and industry professionals, and members of the public to engage in these topical discussions

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Dr David Pannell is Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Western Australia, Co-Director of the Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and was an ARC Federation Fellow (2007-2012). He is a director of Natural Decisions Pty Ltd.

EVENT DETAILS
Date: Friday 20 May 2022
Time: 11:00am - 12:00pm  AWST
Where: Online; click on tab below to register
Cost: FREE
For more information, please click here or contact Curtis Rollins.