Olive Trees Can Help Beat Climate Change

The idea that the olive tree could be a cru­cial tool in com­bat­ing cli­mate change may seem far-fetched. Still, the International Olive Council (IOC) has gath­ered evi­dence sug­gest­ing just that.

Over 300 experts, includ­ing sci­en­tists, farm­ers, pri­vate com­pa­nies and pol­i­cy­mak­ers from 30 coun­tries, met in Madrid in mid-October to dis­cuss the role of olive groves in address­ing cli­mate change.

Jaime Lillo, the IOC’s deputy exec­u­tive direc­tor who will take the helm of the inter­gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion in 2024, told atten­dees on the first day that devel­op­ing the role of olive groves as a potent tool to mit­i­gate the impacts of cli­mate change will be a cen­tral focus of the IOC dur­ing his man­date.

“It is the nat­ural behav­ior of the olive tree to cap­ture car­bon diox­ide in the atmos­phere, absorb it, and then store it firstly in the bio­mass and finally, into the soil in a per­ma­nent way,” Juan Antonio Polo Palomino, the head of the IOC’s olive oil tech­nol­ogy and envi­ron­ment depart­ment, told Olive Oil Times.

As a result, olive groves serve as sig­nif­i­cant car­bon sinks. According to IOC data, olive groves span­ning 10.5 mil­lion hectares glob­ally can poten­tially remove 47 mil­lion tons of car­bon diox­ide from the atmos­phere annu­ally.

“Thus, tak­ing into account the total life cycle of olive oil, it can be main­tained that the pro­duc­tion of one kilo­gram of olive oil removes 10 kilo­grams of car­bon diox­ide from the atmos­phere,” the IOC con­cluded in a 2017 study.

Olive oil is already glob­ally appre­ci­ated for its taste and nutri­tional prop­er­ties. Its added pos­i­tive impact on the envi­ron­ment could make the sec­tor even more attrac­tive to con­sumers.

However, few know about the crop’s pos­i­tive envi­ron­men­tal impact. ​“Consumers must be made aware that olive oil is a healthy fat and the most envi­ron­men­tally friendly fat, pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able and envi­ron­men­tally friendly con­sump­tion,” Polo Palomino said.

Experts at the work­shop have timed their find­ings to coin­cide with the European Commission’s frame­work for vol­un­tary credit car­bon mar­kets, which relies on three types of car­bon removals: car­bon stor­age in long-last­ing prod­ucts and mate­ri­als, per­ma­nent car­bon stor­age and car­bon farm­ing.

According to Polo Palomino, experts at the IOC have demon­strated that the olive tree, which falls under the third European Commission pil­lar of car­bon removals, is a car­bon sink, and they stand ready to work along­side the com­mis­sion to ensure that the frame­work rec­og­nizes the olive oil sector’s fun­da­men­tal role.

Moreover, ​“we can improve on the olive tree’s nat­ural abil­ity to remove car­bon from the atmos­phere by sup­ple­ment­ing it with sus­tain­able agri­cul­tural prac­tices,” he said.

According to Polo Palomino, farm­ers can imple­ment waste col­lec­tion and com­post­ing prac­tices to improve their groves’ abil­ity to sequester car­bon diox­ide.

“Adding organic mat­ter like leaves and waste from prun­ing back into the olive grove would improve the soil’s phys­i­cal struc­ture and min­eral com­po­nents,” he said. ​“In addi­tion, there would be other ben­e­fi­cial side-effects for the soil’s health.”

“For exam­ple, while the olive tree’s nat­ural abil­ity to absorb car­bon would func­tion, increas­ing the organic mat­ter in the soil improves its capac­ity to retain humid­ity, caus­ing it to require less water and irri­ga­tion,” Polo Palomino added.

Experts at the IOC work­shop view olive farm­ing as an excel­lent oppor­tu­nity for farm­ers to earn addi­tional income.

“Not only would they earn income from the sale of olive oil, but also, given the pos­i­tive impact on the envi­ron­ment, they could ben­e­fit from sell­ing car­bon cred­its on the vol­un­tary car­bon credit mar­ket,” Polo Palomino said.

“The olive grower should be seen as a guardian of a for­est, and there­fore, this extra income from car­bon cred­its can eco­nom­i­cally rec­og­nize this impor­tant role,” he added.

However, the olive sec­tor is not yet a part of the E.U. tax­on­omy for sus­tain­able invest­ment and, thus, does not qual­ify for the vol­un­tary car­bon credit mar­ket. The IOC and experts are work­ing to gain recog­ni­tion for the sec­tor.

• Journal of Environmental Management