Result-based carbon farming and multifunctionality

Enhancing the potential of soils to store more carbon while maintaining existing SOC levels, especially on peatlands and other agricultural soils, is a key lever for mitigating climate change in the LULUCF sector. In late 2022, the European Commission announced a framework for a regulatory framework on carbon removals, which will set standards for future carbon farming activities. To meet the ambitions, the European Commission also emphasises that the forthcoming Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that comes into effect from January 2023 should increasingly reward farmers environmental- and climate friendly performance through a more result-oriented model. In result-based schemes, payment levels reflect the actual impact of the management practices on carbon stocks (relative to a benchmark), may thus reduce the cost to attain a given environmental benefit.

However, designing effective schemes is a complex process, particularly in terms of (1) minimizing costs (of incentives and MRV), (2) and ensuring environmental performance (effectiveness, additionality and additional ecosystem services) and (3) social (fairness, legitimacy and land-user engagement). Further, optimizing schemes only according to the ability to sequester carbon or prevent emissions may lead to sub-optimal outcomes, rather it may be important to move beyond schemes that only optimize on one parameter. The EJP SOIL Road4Schemes project has gathered an inventory containing 170 European carbon farming schemes. While some of the identified schemes focus exclusively on carbon sequestration while other scheme designs support a wider number of ecosystem services. This presentation synthesizes the experience from these 170 schemes regarding opportunities and barriers for designing successful result-based carbon farming schemes that also include additional ecosystem services.