To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what estimate he has made of the percentage of the UK’s (a) greenhouse gas, (b) methane and (c) nitrous oxide emission which derive from (i) agriculture and (ii) forestry. (284872)

[holding answer 7 July 2009]: According to the UK greenhouse gas (GHG) Inventory: 1990-2006 report, GHG emissions from agriculture in 2006 were 44.71 Mt CO₂e which was 7 per cent. of total UK emissions. Emissions for which agriculture was responsible are as follows:

18.7 Mt CO₂e of methane (CH₄) emissions which was 38.0 per cent. of the UK’s CH₄ emissions, mainly from the digestive systems of livestock and from manure and;

25.7 Mt CO₂e of nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions which was 67.4 per cent. of the total UK N₂O emissions, mainly from the use of nitrogen fertiliser.

Forestry is recorded in the UK GHG inventory as part of the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector which contains both sources and sinks of GHGs. In 2006, the UK GHG inventory reported the following sources and sinks for the forestry sector:

A net removal of 14.7 Mt CO₂, resulting from the growth of existing forests, and results of afforestation, but also accounting for emissions associated with deforestation (a removal, but in magnitude equivalent to 3 per cent. of UK CO₂ emissions);

A source of 0.0029 Mt CO₂e CH₄ from wildfires and biomass burning (less than 0.1 per cent. of UK CH₄ emissions);

A source of 0.0043 Mt CO₂e N₂O emissions from forest wildfires, biomass burning and nitrogen fertilisation of forest land (less than 0.01 per cent. of UK N₂O emissions).