Project Title: Quantifying the potential Impact of Carbon Sequestration Policies – A Regional Analysis for Irish Agriculture using the CAPRI model

Overview: Due to an increasing need for food and commodities, agricultural activities have transformed into intensified farming systems, which has adversely impacted the environment, in particular, by a remarkable increase in Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions over the recent decades. Identified as the biggest contributor to GHG emissions, agriculture accounts for 37% of which 83% come from animals. Accordingly, Ireland, under the Government’s Climate Act 2021 commits to delivering the target of net-zero GHG emissions by 2050, where afforestation as a carbon sequestration strategies a big component of land-use change and provides a range of multiple benefits and ecosystem services. However, planting trees require action to be taken by farmers to change existing production systems.

Zohreh is a Walsh Scholar PhD candidate whose research focuses, in the first phase, on understanding farmers’ decision-making toward the adoption of afforestation and, in the second phase, on the potential impact of GHG mitigation strategies, in particular, afforestation, with a regional analysis for Irish agriculture. To this end, applying multiple research methods/approaches, she seeks to first identify how carbon sequestration through afforestation over the different farming systems in Ireland has evolved. Then, she develops an NFS supplementary questionnaire based on a behavioural theory of decision-making to find the barriers rooted in farmers’ willingness to adopt afforestation. Finally, she simulates the afforestation scenarios to quantify the economic impact of land-use change at the EU and national levels using the CAPRI model

Programme Area: Quantifying the potential impact of carbon sequestration polices, focusing on afforestation.

Supervisors: Dr Kevin Kilcline, Dr James Breen and Dr Lucie Adenaeuer

Univarsity: University college Dublin (UCD)

Funding Source: Teagasc