“The goal is to develop good strategies for financing the climate transition in agriculture and strengthening biodiversity,” says assistant professor Kajsa-Stina Benulic at TEMAM, Environmental Change.
Individual farmers are currently not required to report their climate emissions or impacts on biodiversity, but this may become a requirement in the future. However, anyone wanting to invest in measures now is facing a major problem. As there are no existing methods for measuring the climate and environmental impacts of agriculture, it is difficult to know which measures will have the best effect.
Banks and farmers
Under an EU directive, however, large players such as banks must report the environmental and climate impact of their operations. But if they are to lend money to farmers wanting to invest in climate transition, they are facing the same problem. The lack of data makes it difficult to know which projects to lend money for to ensure good figures in your climate reporting.
Kajsa-Stina Benulic has just received almost SEK 20 million from the government research council Formas for an interdisciplinary project that will look at climate change in agriculture from several different aspects. One part of the project is about developing new measurement methods, another has to do with how banks should design their lending operations to facilitate the transition in agriculture, a third is about how climate and environmental impacts should be reported in a credible and uniform way.
Interdisciplinary collaboration
To solve the challenges of the project, researchers in science, business administration and environmental communication collaborate. It will be run in collaboration between Linköping University and Swedbank.
The project Verified strategies for financing agricultural climate transition and strengthened biodiversity will run until 2030. Kajsa-Stina Benulic hopes that the research team will then be able to present at least three clear results:
“A clear reporting standard, which not only those involved in the project can use, but which can have a broad impact. That several farms will actually have found the unexpected sources of emissions and impacts on biodiversity and have been able to do something about it.
And that the banks have found new loan criteria, or financial instruments, that simplify financing climate transition in agriculture.”
