03-06-2025
Climate scientists gather in Dublin to discuss agriculture
Climate scientists are attending the meeting of the Council of the Global Research Alliance for Agricultural Greenhouse Gases (GRA) which opened today, Tuesday June 3, 2025, at Dublin Castle.
The GRA brings together climate scientists from across the world to enhance collaboration and progress climate research in agriculture.
Ireland, through the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM), officially assumed the chair of the GRA from January 1, 2025, for a period of 18 months.
This is the first time that Ireland has chaired the GRA since joining in 2009.
Climate scientists
Established in 2009, the GRA aims to provide a framework for voluntary action to increase international cooperation and investment in research activities for mitigating agricultural GHG and improving carbon sequestration, as well as improving the measurement of emissions in different agricultural systems.
The GRA also helps scientists to gain expertise in mitigation through developing new partnerships and exchanges.
A total of 68 countries and 29 partners are now members. The council meeting in Dublin sees delegates from a large number of these countries and partners in attendance.
Over the course of the two-day meeting, they will consider among other things, a new Strategic Plan to 2030, as well as hearing updates from the activities of the four research groups.
These groups are: livestock; croplands; paddy rice; and integrative cross cutting areas.
They will also consider proposals for new flagship projects in areas such as the biological nitrification inhibition of pasture swards to reduce nitrous oxide emissions.
They will additionally consider the outcomes of completed flagship projects such as the 'Feed Additives' project that has developed practical tools, protocols and guidelines for the testing and implementation of feed additives.
The council meeting will be chaired by officials from DAFM.
Many of the delegates will attend the 'Agriculture and Climate Change: Science into Action' conference also taking place in Dublin Castle on Thursday (June 5).
They will also visit Teagasc Grange Research Centre and a farm on Friday (June 6), to see first-hand the research taking place on agricultural GHGs in Ireland and how the outputs of this research are being implemented on an Irish farm.
Along with Ireland as the chair, the GRA special representative, who is the ambassador for the GRA, is Dr. Harry Clark, chief scientist of the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre.
Prof. Tommy Boland, University College Dublin (UCD) School of Agriculture and Food Science, is a co-chair of the livestock research group (one of four research groups) of the GRA.
