A Common Approach to Greenhouse-Gas Accounting for Australian Agriculture: Methods and Data Guidance

Abstract

A common approach for GHG accounting across agricultural sectors is essential to enhance consistency, transparency and confidence in sector-level GHG reporting. Internationally, there are approaches and tools that influence Australian farmers via market access criteria or product labelling, which do not always adequately reflect the reality of Australian farming. A common approach to GHG accounting will allow Australian agriculture to control the representation and communication of climate impacts and mitigation.

This Methods and Data Guidance provides a common framework for greenhouse gas (GHG)accounting of Australian agricultural activities at the sector level. The process that was followed to develop this framework is described in the Project Overview and Non-Technical Summary (Sevenster et al., 2023). It describes how GHG accounting can be conducted to generate a transparent and trusted inventory of GHG emissions based on: - a consistent set of principles - a modular approach to account for differences between agricultural sectors - general guidance on data - consistent terminology and language. Agricultural sectors, in the context of this document, refer to individual commodities (or commodity groups such as “grains”), as distinguished by the system of levies applied to primary production. They include forestry and fisheries. No existing standards or protocols exist for this context, which is the reason this guidance document was generated. Nevertheless, where possible and appropriate, the approaches and method choices recommended in this framework draw on relevant guidance from the following frameworks primarily: - Australian National Greenhouse Gas Inventory (NGGI) - ISO 14044:2006 Environmental management — Life cycle assessment — Requirements and guidelines (ISO, 2006) - ISO 14067:2018 Greenhouse gases — Carbon footprint of products — Requirements and guidelines for quantification (ISO, 2018) - guidance provided by the Livestock Environmental Assessment and Performance (LEAP) Partnership (FAO, 2016) - sector-specific guidance for product or corporate accounting, such as IDF (2022).

In addition, guidance for corporate accounting provided by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG-P)(GHG-P, 2015), guidance for product accounting provided by GHG-P(GHG-P, 2011), the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) scheme (EU, 2021), and guidance from the ILCD Handbook (ILCD, 2010) is referenced for some aspects of the goal and scope principles (2.1).