In a few weeks I will be visiting Uruguay, a country that I’ve never been to before. So before going, I took time to look up what, if anything, they’ve been doing with respect to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Quite a surprise. Uruguay is a party to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and specifically the Kyoto Protocol, but it is not an Annex I country. This means that it is under no formal obligation to reduce its GHGs. Yet, according to the World Bank, it did exactly that between 1990 and 2004, the latest year for which data is available. Specifically, in 1990, Uruguay emitted an estimated 29,200 billion grams (Gg) of CO2 equivalent while in 2004 it emitted 25,900 Gg, a decrease of about 11 percent. All of this reduction and more was caused by a decrease in CO2 emissions, as other GHGs in Uruguay actually increased over the period.
How did this come about? Mainly through two programs that the government encouraged. One was low- or no-tillage agriculture, which arguably increases carbon sequestration in the soil. Emissions data is mixed from deployment of this technique, but there is evidence that soil carbon content clearly increased in some instances from no tillage agriculture and Uruguay’s record of GHG reductions is consistent with the technique having played a contributing role there.
The other program in Uruguay was reforestation. According to one source, Uruguay increased its forest cover by a net 550,000 hectares between 1990 and 2005 after accounting for both new plantings and forest area lost to development over that period. The government has identified several million more hectares as suitable for reforestation so there may be further efforts of this kind there.
Over the period in which Uruguay’s GHGs decreased, it still experienced economic growth. In inflation adjusted terms, the country’s GDP was about $14 billion in 1990 and over $18 billion in 2004, an increase of almost 30 percent. It seems plausible that without the tillage and reforestation programs Uruguay’s GHG emissions would have risen rather than fallen.
It may be that Uruguay’s GHG reductions were serendipitous, stemming from programs the country was embarking upon anyway. But no matter why they occurred, they are a welcome example of what can be done. I’m looking forward to my visit all the more.
