Cost-Effectiveness in Agricultural Climate Actions through a Tendering Model
TARJOKE
In the mitigation of emissions from peatlands, raising the groundwater level has been identified in various studies as the most central and effective means of reducing emissions. Despite the private sector's need to find emission reduction targets and the existence of carbon markets, the watering of peat fields has not been successfully channeled into these markets as sellable products, nor has it been effectively directly financed as individual companies' climate actions. Similarly, the state's own climate actions have not been able to sufficiently allocate money to these measures, despite increasing pressure to find emission reductions and carbon sinks from the land use sector, and the fact that the reduction and sink potential of peat fields is very high.
The core idea of the project is to develop methods that enable the cost-effective channeling of financing from both the private and public sectors to the targeting, funding, and implementation of watering peat fields. The goal is to develop a tendering mechanism for the public sector to use, which can remove the cheapest and highest environmental benefit fields from cultivation permanently or long-term; and to strengthen the channeling of private sector financing through carbon markets as well as direct corporate financing.
The project plan is based on the allocation of a €30 million budget designated for the development of wetlands and wetland cultivation projects by Marin's government, drafted for a wetland program. Although the program's financing did not materialize during this government term, an effective mechanism is needed in any case for the broader implementation of watering actions.
The project's funding will implement a limited tendering pilot, which will acquire either long-term or permanent cultivation rights for thick-peat fields in exchange for compensation requested by the providers. The project's results will benefit the trial of the tendering model for deploying other climate and environmental actions from a cost-benefit perspective and can also be beneficial when implementing, for example, the METSO and Helmi programs.
