"Carbon markets need to be appropriately designed so that farmers can effectively engage to be part of the solution," said the organisation’s president, Ajay Vashee. While farmers should not be exempt from measures to curb emissions, he added, governments need to recognise their role in growing essential food and to reward those who have protected landscapes and wildlife habitats.
Citing "a certain threshold beyond which we cannot go below", Vashee said: "It is important to realise the realities of the situation." In Australia, for example, 70% of agricultural emissions and 11% of the country’s total emissions, come from the burping, flatulence and manure of sheep and cattle.
Environment ministers are to meet in late 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark, to begin talks on a global agreement to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
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