Amendments to Northern Ireland's Climate Change Bill will be debated at Further Consideration Stage in the Northern Ireland Assembly on Monday, February 28.
These amendments will be brought forward by Minister Edwin Poots to ensure that the agriculture sector is not being unfairly burdened as part of the agreed net-zero target for Northern Ireland, and also to fix some of the significant drafting issues created at the Consideration Stage.
“I have....proposed, for Further Consideration Stage, some amendments to my Executive Bill, most notably, two amendments to provide some degree of protection for our agriculture sector," said Minister Poots.
"The first is to ensure that, in the context of aiming for net zero emissions by 2050, the level of reductions in methane emissions is not required to be more than 46% lower than the baseline year (1990).
"Importantly, this is consistent with the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and CCC [Climate Change Committee] evidence and advice in regards to reducing methane to achieve long term temperature goals in the Paris Agreement.
"The next amendment is to remove emissions from agricultural sources from the net zero target," he added.
The vast majority of the rest of the amendments Poots said, are technical amendments which are "necessary to make the Bill a more coherent piece of legislation".
"Unfortunately, there was not time to fix all drafting issues so therefore in line with best practice, I have put forward amendments to fix the most significant issues," he said.
He added that he hopes these amendments are supported:
"A number of the Assembly Members who supported the 2050 net zero target at Consideration Stage debates also indicated that they support the agricultural sector and care about farming and that aiming for such a target does not mean that there will be cuts to the herd.
"I hope therefore these Members are true to their word, and demonstrate their position of support for the agri-food sector, by supporting my amendments.”
