The European Commission has presented a new proposal on accounting of greenhouse gases emissions in the forest and agriculture sectors. According to the Commission, this is the first step towards incorporating removals and emissions from forests and agriculture into the EU's climate policy.

The European Commission adopted a Decision proposal to establishes accounting rules for greenhouse gas emissions and removals in the forest and agriculture sectors, the last major sectors without common EU-wide rules. The proposal comes following the decision of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on revised accounting rules from soils and forests adopted in December 2011. According to the Commission, it will provide new opportunities, for instance, to reward farmers for their contribution in the fight against climate change in the context of the common agricultural policy.

The proposed Decision for harmonised rules for the accounting of greenhouse gas emissions and removals in forests and soils has to be approved by the European Parliament and the Council. With the proposal also comes the obligation for each Member State to adopt action plans on how they will increase removals of carbon and decrease emissions of greenhouse gases in forests and soils throughout the EU. The Commission also highlights that the proposal does not include a commitment for national emission reduction targets for these sectors.

Forests and agricultural lands cover more than three-quarters of the EU territory and naturally hold large stocks of carbon, preventing its escape into the atmosphere, which makes them important for the climate policy. Increasing this 'trapped' carbon by just 0.1 percentage point would remove the annual emissions of 100 million cars from the atmosphere. The efforts of farmers and forest owners and their good practice aimed at securing carbon stored in forests and soils, have not been or only been partly recognised. The reason for this has been the challenges that come with collecting robust carbon data from forests and soils and the lack of common rules on how to account for emissions and removals.