A company overseeing a biodiversity credit pilot in Romania is seeking to show the government how its use of EU environmental payments is incentivising the degradation of hay meadows, Carbon Pulse has learned.
Romania-based NGO Fundatia ADEPT Transilvania is gathering data with which it aims to prove how government policy has adverse effects on biodiversity, carbon, and livelihoods, its president, Nat Page, told Carbon Pulse.
ADEPT has been gathering the data on grasslands in Tarnarva Mare, Transylvania to underpin its work on a biodiversity credit pilot since 2022.
It aims to enable smallholder farmers to continue farming using traditional practices, while avoiding the threat of industrial farming. Non-profit Operation Wallacea’s methodology will underpin the credits.
The Transylvanian project plans to begin to generate credits through avoided loss from around 800 hectares this year, if enough farmers decide to engage, before starting producing units from 4,000 ha within five years, said Page.
The initiative is looking to initially pre-sell around 47,000 biodiversity credits at $20 each, potentially raising $940,000, said Tim Coles, CEO of RePlanet.
Farmers in Tranyslvania, summer 2023. Credit for all images: ADEPT
THE POLICY
The Transylvanian landscape, home of a protected blue butterfly, has been preserved for centuries through traditional management. The key to maintaining its biodiversity is to support farmers in continuing their practices, said Page.
However, misguided policies from the government threaten to undo decades of sustainable land management practices, he said.
Around €1.64 billion of EU support will back Romanian farmers willing to implement environmentally friendly agricultural practices, according to the country’s approved strategy for 2023-27.
Part of this funding is intended to support Transylvanian farmers with threatened hay meadows, biodiversity-rich grasslands that also act as carbon sinks. And has done so until now.
In measures that came into effect this year, the Romanian government has changed its criteria for farmers to receive environmental payments from hay meadows – asking them to only mow by hand from August, said Page.
“There are two major problems with this. First, if you mow after Aug. 1, the hay loses all its nutritional value, making it worthless to the farmer.”
“Second, you can’t mow by hand when the grass is that old because it becomes woody and incredibly difficult to cut through.” Farmers need to able to mow at flexible times of year, depending on the conditions, to achieve the optimum crop quality.
Mowing by tractor, compared to hand, does not affect biodiversity on the land as long as it allows time for flowers to seed and birds to hatch, he said.
“The Romanian government has adopted an extreme, non-farmer-friendly system that might work on an acre of a site of special scientific interest in the UK … but if imposed on a large-scale agricultural landscape, it’s completely impractical. It will destroy the landscape.”
Furthermore, the government has no way of measuring the loss of hay meadows, which it is obligated to report to the EU, he claimed. “Since they lack the means to measure it, they simply report ‘no change’ every year. It’s not true.”
The Romanian government has not replied to a request from Carbon Pulse to respond to Page’s statements.
MONITORING GRASSLANDS
ADEPT is gathering data it will use to show the Romanian government how the new policy affects outcomes across butterflies, flowers, birds, soil, and carbon.
The NGO started baselining in Transylvania in 2022. Each year of monitoring costs about €150,000, which is currently funded by partner RePlanet.
ADEPT is now strengthening its data-gathering by using a form of community-based monitoring, developed by London-based company Mosaic Earth, which will pay farmers for monitoring biodiversity.
Locals will be paid to photograph vegetation at specific GPS points, and upload the photos. “We have botanists in Romania who can assess the photographs to check for species presence, absence, and condition,” said Page.
Hay meadow in Transylvania, summer 2023.
CARBON AND BIODIVERSITY CREDITS
Instead of measuring improvements over time, the goal of ADEPT’s biodiversity credits is to protect existing biodiversity from degradation.
“We’re selling the avoidance of loss, so we need to prove the threat – that the land might be ploughed up or intensified,” said Page.
By adhering to practices like not ploughing, not fertilising, and mowing at least once a year after a certain date, farmers help maintain biodiversity while earning a sustainable income.
To validate biodiversity credits, ADEPT must compare metrics from the land of its partner farmers with areas nearby that have been industrially farmed.
Despite some challenges, such as the mobility of birds complicating data analysis, ADEPT believes the approach will yield promising results.
The programme aims to stack carbon credits with biodiversity credits to generate enough revenue.
“The project won’t work without carbon and biodiversity income streams. If you just did carbon, it would fail. If you just did biodiversity, it would fail, unless the prices were really high,” said RePlanet’s Coles.
Carbon credits, however, present more difficulties. “The accumulation of carbon in grassland is very slow, so grassland carbon credits on their own are hard to sell. But, if permanent grassland is ploughed, most of the carbon sequestered over 100 years is lost in a few months. Hence the importance of the avoidance of loss approach,” said Page.
The initiative managers were not able to reveal more information on the carbon credits at this point.
FARMER PAYMENTS
Farmers are at the centre of both the biodiversity and carbon credit systems.
The Transylvanian scheme has proposed paying farmers €180, €220, or €280 per ha of hay meadow annually, depending on the quality of the land, said Coles.
Those payments can be made on top of any money from the EU, meaning farmers could earn around €500 a hectare maximum from both revenue streams, Coles told Carbon Pulse.
“The current income from their land is so low that young people aren’t interested in taking over their parents’ farms,” said Page.
Some 60-70% of any funds raised from biodiversity credits will go to farmers, with the remainder covering the costs of managing the scheme.
Payments will be index-linked to ensure their value keeps pace with inflation. Contracts will be adapted to ensure the practices are tailored to each farmer’s land, allowing flexibility with factors like mowing dates.
“We’re getting interest from farmers, and we hope to have all the contracts finalised by early November,” Page said.
By Thomas Cox – t.cox@carbon-pulse.com
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