Convery was the guest on a recent international Zoom call hosted by New Zealand Climate Change Commissioners Harry Clark and Catherine Leining.
He says NZ and Ireland are in the same boat, being at the top of the list of OECD’s members that are export-led with agriculture-dominated GHG emissions.
“We’re on the same journey politically and technically,” Convery said.
“We share the same challenges. We’re at the same stage.
“Most of all though, I think the chemistry is right. And it’s already happening up to a point.”
When it comes to investing in GHG mitigation innovation, Convery says both countries need to err on the side of doing “too much” rather than not enough.
He says statisticians talk about type one error, which is the cost of doing too little and then be confronted with huge costs.
Type two error is where you do a bit too much early on, but avoid the costs later.
“We want to embrace type two error. Do too much and foster our economy and our climate,” he said.
He is predicting that although NZ and Ireland can currently point to performing well in terms of agricultural GHG emissions compared to the amount of protein produced, countries like the UK and the US are likely to catch up quickly, so improving our performance in this area will become increasingly important to be able to protect future market access, as GHG metrics and tax barriers could come into play.
Convery says the UK is looking at introducing a “pay for performance” system around GHG and land-use.
“Once you pay farmers for performance you get performance, so the key implication for me if the UK does what it’s promising to do, is that we’ll see fairly sharp improvements in carbon stewardship in regard to land in the UK over the next five or six years,” he said.
The other freedom that the UK has post-Brexit is that it can manage its taxes independently, Convery says, especially around trade arrangements.
He says those likely changes mean the UK will become a serious performer in reducing emissions and increasing its carbon efficiency, which in turn will be followed by effort to protect its domestic markets against carbon leakage.
Across the Atlantic, he’s predicting new US federal legislation to provide significant tax support for climate action, channeling subsidies and funds in that direction.
That means there is potential for the US to become a leader in feedlot intensive indoor feeding farming systems in terms of carbon performance.
Methane is one obvious area for innovation collaboration between NZ and Ireland, but Convery would also like to see more investigation into the integration of carbon farming and meat and milk production to see what those systems could look like.
He says to find out more about how to do that effectively, it makes sense to talk to people who are the best in the world doing that now.
“They are probably not in NZ or in Ireland. They are probably in South and Central America,” he said.
Convery is unsure of any specific inter-government levers that could be pulled to accelerate collaboration – but he’s not too concerned about that.
“I don’t worry about the mechanisms; the view in Ireland is once we know what we want we put pieces in place, then we find the mechanisms,” he said.
“So, I think the order of things should be: this is the agenda that has to be delivered if we’re going to deliver at scale; these are the pieces of the jigsaw that will deliver that; and then find the modality.
“But money is key of course, you have to devote resources.”
As part of that, Ireland is using its carbon tax revenues to support its climate agenda.
He says another option, which has gained support in Europe, is green bonds.
“The European Commission has agreed to a green bond model. They are proposing to raise millions with green bonds, then use them to drive the agenda,” he said.
However, in the end it is about priorities.
He says strategically for Ireland and NZ, the way to avoid getting caught up in looming debates over carbon leakage and access to international markets is to improve GHG mitigation performance.
“If we improve our performance then we’ll thrive. If we don’t, we won’t,” he said.
