*CA-CoP* *CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE*
*for sustainable production intensification*
Dear Subscribers,
Please see herebelow a message from David Duthie of Bioplan regarding
carbon footprint from the Global Footprint Network and from Fred Pearce
(the well-known environment journalist) which is relevant to the interests
of CA-CoP subscribers.
Apologies for cross-posting.
*Amir Kassam *
*Moderator*
e-mail: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
URL: www.fao.org/ag/ca
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Duthie <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sat, Mar 12, 2016 at 11:33 PM
Subject: Giant (climate) footprints and footstep
To: bioplan <[log in to unmask]>
Dear BIOPLANNERS,
Below I am pasting what could be considered to be the two sides of the
climate carbon coin.
The Global Footprint Network calculations focus on the impact of humanity
of the planet - and now has adjusted its methodology to reflect an even
greater role for carbon in upsetting the overall footprint/biocapacity
balance (see the first article below).
Fred Pearce has always tried to be an environmental optimist, but is also
an extremely "even-handed" journalist who reports the facts as they are.
The second paste is an extremely clear assessment of how much carbon weight
we need to lose if we are to make our (carbon) footprint more like the
"patter of tiny feet" rather than "boots made for stomping" on the planet -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULAAuq-kyRA
Best wishes
David Duthie
*********************************************
Global Footprint Network launches its 2016 edition of the National
Footprint Accounts today, featuring a refined carbon Footprint calculation.
The updated calculation has revealed that the global *carbon* Footprint is
16 percent higher than previously calculated, with a consequent 8 percent
increase in the global Ecological Footprint. *The carbon Footprint makes up
60 percent of the world’s Ecological Footprint*.
We are happy to make the National Footprint Accounts available in a free
downloadable version
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=370059d45f&e=a72ef4c43f>
for research, education and non-commercial purposes (scroll down for more
details). An interactive map and country rankings based on the National
Footprint Accounts 2016 are available at www.footprintnetwork.org/maps
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=745ddfbbec&e=a72ef4c43f>.
Watch a video explaining the National Footprint Accounts here
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=45f2382dfd&e=a72ef4c43f>.
If you are interested in attending a webinar on the Footprint Accounts,
please email [log in to unmask]
The annual maintenance of the National Footprint Accounts involves
incorporating the most recent data (2012) from the United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations Comtrade database, the
International Energy Agency (IEA), and other sources.
*Carbon Update*
As mentioned above, we have made a number of improvements to the accounting
methodology this year. The most influential is the new calculation of
Average Forest Carbon Sequestration (AFCS) value
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=323478231a&e=a72ef4c43f>
— which is the long-term capacity for one hectare of world-average forest
ecosystem to sequester carbon dioxide. By including new data sources and
accounting for multiple forest categories, global wildfires, and forest
ecosystem emissions from soil and harvested wood products, forests were
found to provide less net-sequestration of carbon than previously
calculated.
The Ecological Footprints of countries are impacted by the new methodology.
The higher a country’s carbon Footprint as a percentage of its overall
Ecological Footprint, the bigger the increase in its Footprint compared to
last year’s edition. For instance, Oman
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=80f5554591&e=a72ef4c43f>,
whose carbon Footprint makes up a whopping 77 percent of its Ecological
Footprint, has jumped up over 20 places in the ranking of countries that
demand more than their own ecosystems can renew. (Oman is now one of the
top 15 countries by ecological deficit.) On the other hand, Ethiopia
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=b04460dfe1&e=a72ef4c43f>,
whose carbon Footprint is a mere 7 percent of its Ecological Footprint,
fell 16 slots down the same ranking.
The robust carbon Footprint calculations are especially timely in light of
the historic Paris Agreement signed in December 2015 by 195 nations and the
European Union. The adopted goal of restricting average temperature
increases to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial Revolution levels
translates into a specific upper carbon budget for all future emissions of
800 gigatonnes CO2. The Paris Agreement also shifts the focus to *net*
emissions of countries, recognizing the importance of land-use choices for
carbon sequestration. In this context, Ecological Footprint accounts —
which measure both emissions on the demand side and the supply of
sequestration on the biocapacity side — provide a natural framework to
evaluate net emissions by countries and the interaction between competing
demands on a country’s land.
Beyond carbon, looking at the world through the prism of the Ecological
Footprint makes for interesting insights, revealing long-term trends and
impacts regarding countries’ ecological wealth, economic health and
population growth. Here are a few highlights:
- *PIGS countries* (Portugal
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=a419be93fa&e=a72ef4c43f>,
Italy
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=bf5ee2c8f0&e=a72ef4c43f>,
Greece
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=8b2a245dc9&e=a72ef4c43f>,
Spain
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=6330b0f552&e=a72ef4c43f>)
have been registering a steady decline of their Ecological Footprint per
capita since the mid-2000s. By contrast, strong European economies like
Germany
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=eee5cfe807&e=a72ef4c43f>
and France
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=88f84eee14&e=a72ef4c43f>
have seen a rebound of their Ecological Footprint per capita since the 2008
financial crisis. What would it take for the PIGS countries to strengthen
their economy AND reduce their Ecological Footprint?
-
- *Asian countries with rapid economic expansion*, such as India
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=6647a1e3ef&e=a72ef4c43f>,
China
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=36b2bcae84&e=a72ef4c43f>,
South Korea
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=a8369c64b4&e=a72ef4c43f>
and Vietnam
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=83034b79a3&e=a72ef4c43f>,
are displaying a strong increase of their Ecological Footprint per capita
that is concomitant with their rising standards of living.
-
- Note that Vietnam and Cambodia stand out among Asian countries for
their successful efforts building up their biocapacity per person to
support their growing Ecological Footprint.
-
- *Low-income countries with surging population growth (fast-increasing
demand) or violent turmoil (collapse of agricultural activity and output)*
— including Honduras
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=9cfe036ebe&e=a72ef4c43f>,
Niger
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=a876e45277&e=a72ef4c43f>
and Somalia
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=6ad02688f8&e=a72ef4c43f>
— are hitting the threshold of their own ecosystems’ ability to support
(biocapacity) their population’s demand (Ecological Footprint.)
-
*Curious to explore more? Download our Public Data Package!*
Global Footprint Network is offering a free downloadable version of its
National Footprint Accounts for research, education and non-commercial
purposes, at www.footprintnetwork.org/public
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=47d9947f3d&e=a72ef4c43f>.
This Public Data Package includes the latest results for all countries,
country graphics and the number of Earths required if the world’s
population lived like the average citizen of each country. The free
download also offers many new ways to sort data — by region, GDP, Human
Development Index and other categories — and data quality scores for the
results.
*About the National Footprint Accounts*
Global Footprint Network’s annual update of the National Footprint Accounts
tracks the balance sheet of approximately 200 nations from year to year,
based on nearly 200,000 data points per country per year from over 30
sources. The accounts add together a country’s annual demand for the
natural resources and ecological services our planet’s lands and seas
provide — fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, wood, cotton for clothing,
timber and carbon dioxide absorption. This demand, the *Ecological
Footprint*, then can be compared to the supply of these goods and services
provided by that country’s ecosystems, called *biocapacity*.
In 1961, the first year for which consistent data sets are available, our
planet was able to supply 37 percent more resources and services than
humanity demanded. Since then, the global ecological deficit — the amount
by which humanity’s demand has exceeded nature’s budget — has widened
substantially. The 2016 edition of the National Footprint Accounts shows
that the world population demands 64 percent more than what nature can
regenerate in one year through overfishing, over-harvesting our forests
and, primarily, emitting more carbon dioxide than our ecosystems can
absorb. The effects include wildlife habitat loss and fragmentation,
collapsing fisheries, and climate change.
More information about the new carbon calculation in the National Footprint
Accounts can be found in the peer-reviewed Ecological Indicators
article *Ecological
Footprint: Refining the carbon Footprint calculation*
<http://footprintnetwork.us9.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=6b189d93d725df997bc7ec31d&id=864d5a2900&e=a72ef4c43f>
.
******************************************
*The big carbon clean-up: 2 steps to stop global warming at 1.5 °C*
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2077540-the-big-carbon-clean-up-2-steps-to-stop-global-warming-at-1-5c/
Fred Pearce
World leaders say they want a strict limit on climate change. To hit it we
have to suck a lot of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Here's how we
can do it.
ECSTATIC celebrations broke out in Paris just before Christmas. World
leaders acclaimed their freshly forged deal to fight climate change. There
were hugs and tears. But hold on a second. Were the celebrations justified?
The Paris agreement says governments will find a way to limit global
warming to “well below 2 °C” and do their darndest to have no more than 1.5
°C. Is that even possible?
Aiming for 1.5 °C is definitely a good idea, since two degrees of warming
will almost certainly wipe low-lying islands off the map (see “1.5 °C
versus 2 °C
<https://www.newscientist.com/article/2077540-the-big-carbon-clean-up-2-steps-to-stop-global-warming-at-1-5c/#bx306129B1>“).
According to some climate scientists, it is also an impossible goal. Others
are more optimistic, and think 1.5 °C might just be within reach. Just. One
thing is clear: if we are going to do it, we will have to create a whole
new industry to suck vast quantities of carbon dioxide directly from the
air. Without these “negative emissions” we can bid farewell to 1.5 °C.
So what would this carbon-sucking industry look like? From planting the
Sahara to farming the oceans, there are a number of solutions we could
deploy. The question is how realistic are they, and could they ever be
sufficient?
The essential task is to control the build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Humans have pushed levels from 280 parts per million before the industrial
revolution to 400 ppm now by burning fossil fuels and trashing nature. As a
result, in 2015, meteorological stations around the world recorded a 1 °C
rise in global temperatures above pre-industrial times. The key number here
is 430 ppm – that’s the level that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) says corresponds to 1.5 °C of warming. At this stage,
it is effectively impossible to stop us overshooting that number. But we
could, theoretically, get back down to 430 ppm by the end of the century –
assuming we are willing to create a whole new mega-industry of negative
emissions.
“We will have to create a whole new industry to suck carbon from the air“
Joeri Rogelj of International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
(IIASA), a think tank based in Austria, is one of the first to analyse how
we could do this. From his calculations, it’s possible to draw up a
hypothetical road map to 1.5 °C. The first step
<http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n6/full/nclimate2572.html> is to
bring net global emissions to zero by 2050, emitting no more than 800
gigatonnes cumulatively between now and then (see illustration)
<https://d1o50x50snmhul.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/mg30612901.jpg>.
Keeping emissions at zero after 2050 should be enough to limit warming to
below 2 °C. To bring warming back down to 1.5 °C, we would then have to
remove some 500 Gt from the air.
Net zero emissions by 2050 is no small feat. Some fossil fuels could be
burned, but only as much as can be sucked out of the atmosphere. Still,
there is a glimmer of hope. According to a preliminary assessment by the
Global Carbon Project, last year, CO2 emissions from power stations and
industrial sources fell back to 2013 levels, despite a global economy that
was 6 per cent larger – the first time this has happened outside a global
recession.
Corinne Le Quéré
<http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2892.html>,
who led the analysis and is head of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change
Research at the University of East Anglia, UK, cites three causes. First,
we are burning less coal. China is getting out of coal fast, motivated by
its smog problem as much as anything else. And coal’s contribution to US
electricity generation has shrunk from 53 per cent to 35 per cent in five
years. Second, investment in renewable energy now exceeds that going into
fossil-fuel power stations globally. Optimists hope the Paris deal will
boost this trend. Finally, energy efficiency continues to improve in most
places.
Le Quéré says emissions will probably still rise again, but we may be
surprisingly close to their peak. China, the US and the European Union –
the world’s biggest emitters – are on the right track.
Killing oil and natural gas may prove harder than the assassination of King
Coal. We have to hope that technology can deliver breakthroughs for
transportation systems. The most likely solution is electric vehicles,
which in turn requires better batteries. Planes can’t be plugged in, so may
have to run on biofuels. “The transport sector is particularly hard to
decarbonise,” says Rogelj.
Let’s assume technology and investments do manage to all-but-eliminate
emissions by mid-century. That is the easy half of the road to 1.5 °C. We
still need to suck large amounts of CO2 out of the air to bring
temperatures back down below 2 °C.
“We need a solution that also boosts food production. It’s not as crazy as
it seems“
The whole idea of negative emissions is controversial. Kevin Anderson of
the Tyndall Centre has ridiculed the notion as akin to a pantomime-style
faith in a carbon-sucking fairy godmother. There are suggestions
<http://www.nature.com/news/talks-in-the-city-of-light-generate-more-heat-1.19074>
on the table for how to take greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and
lock them away – the question is whether they can achieve enough without
competing with other things we need, like food. Taking the optimist’s
stance then, what wand does Earth’s fairy godmother need to wave?
There are several ways to chemically absorb CO2 directly from the air – you
may have heard of them as “artificial trees”. All are prohibitively
expensive, both in cash and energy demand, says Pete Smith of the
University of Aberdeen, UK, who headed a global study of negative emissions
options published during the Paris conference. A programme big enough
<http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2870.html>
to meet Rogelj’s 500 Gt target would cost about $270 trillion and consume a
quarter of the world’s energy supply, he says.
Equally unlikely on cost grounds is the idea of augmenting the natural
erosion of carbonate rocks, a process that removes CO2 from the atmosphere.
Which pretty much rules out those ideas.
If chemicals and rocks can’t do the job, what about trees themselves?
Deforestation is currently responsible for more than 10 per cent of our CO2
emissions. If we are to stop temperatures rising, the target agreed in New
York in 2014 for zero global deforestation by 2030 is a must. After that,
replanting could make forests into negative emitters. Where land is
available, this is a bargain option. Smith estimates that the cost is an
order of magnitude lower than the chemical or geological options. That
said, it still adds up to a total bill of $14 trillion over 50 years.
Plus, trees take a lot of land. Planting enough of them to soak up 500 Gt
of CO2 over 50 years would call for 10 million square kilometres – an
expanse as big as the United States, which isn’t available. The Sahara is
also big enough, but plans to cover it in forest aren’t viable.
Don’t give up on trees, though – they could still be a part of the
solution. Why not, asks Smith, plant some trees, cut them when they reach
maturity – at which point they stop soaking up as much CO2 anyway – and
burn them in power stations? If we then planted the cleared land with new
trees or fast-growing energy crops, they could eventually soak up the same
amount of CO2 again, resulting in carbon-neutral energy over the long term.
Now add an extra bit of tech. Capture the concentrated CO2 before it leaves
the power station and bury it. The net effect would be negative emissions
that also generate energy.
Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), as this is known,
effectively reverses the way we generate energy today. Instead of digging
up concentrated carbon in the shape of coal, oil and gas, burning it and
releasing the waste into the atmosphere, we could grab diffuse CO2 from the
air with plants, burn them, and bury the carbon in concentrated form
underground. The more electricity we generate, the bigger the negative
emissions. Could this be the fairy godmother that can save the climate?
Smith’s study found that BECCS could capture 500 Gt of CO2 over the second
half of the century, while contributing a large fraction of the world’s
electricity. “Of all the ways of achieving negative emissions, BECCS seems
to be the most promising,” says Florian Kraxner of IIASA.
Two (giant) steps to 1.5 degrees C
https://d1o50x50snmhul.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/mg30612901.jpg
All the elements have been tried and tested, on a small scale. Carbon
capture and storage systems, for instance, currently put some 20 million
tonnes of CO2 underground every year – often as a means of flushing the
last oil and gas from old seams. Some worry about the safety and
reliability of such burial systems. But the world probably has the capacity
to store at least 20 times the 500 Gt target in former gas and oil
formations or in saline aquifers, says Stuart Haszeldine of the University
of Edinburgh, UK. An attempt to test BECCS
<http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n5/full/nclimate2578.html> on a
larger scale in the UK – by burying emissions from the biomass-burning Drax
power station beneath the North Sea – was abandoned last year after the
government withdrew support.
*Harness the oceans*
The big issue with BECCS is land. It requires less than simply planting
trees, but at its height, delivering 500 Gt of negative emissions would
still take anywhere between 3.8 and 7 million square kilometres, says
Smith. And ideally most of that would be in the tropics, where plants grow
faster – but where the need for land to grow food is also greatest. “We
have to feed a population of 9 to 10 billion people in 2050,” Smith says,
“which is a challenge of similar proportions to that posed by limiting
climate change to 1.5 °C.”
The danger is that people will find new land to grow their food by clearing
forests or grasslands. An analysis last year by Andrew Wiltshire of the UK
Met Office and Taraka Davies-Barnard of the University of Exeter argued
that this could reduce the effectiveness of BECCS by up to 80 per cent
<http://www.avoid.uk.net/2015/07/planetary-limits-to-beccs-negative-emissions-d2a/>
.
What is really needed is a solution that sucks CO2 out of the atmosphere
while boosting food production. It’s not as crazy as it seems. Farmers
already use tricks to keep carbon in the ground. For instance, ploughing
encourages the breakdown of dead plant matter and release of CO2, so many
now practice “no-till farming”, which allows plant matter to build up in
the soil instead. A more intense solution, which could match the scale of
the climate challenge, would be to bury biochar: agricultural waste like
straw, manure and unused food that has been pyrolysed to charcoal.
Burying biochar is an industrialised version of traditional methods
practised by tribes in the Amazon and elsewhere to enrich their soils.
Because biochar contains tightly bound carbon atoms, it is stable for
hundreds of years. Smith calculates that biochar could provide up to 125 Gt
of negative CO2 emissions between 2050 and 2100
<http://doi:10.1111/gcb.13178>.
And there’s another option that could help. Consider the fact that most of
the planet is ocean – Earth’s largest carbon sink. Tricking the oceans into
taking in more CO2 by fertilising plankton with iron or nitrogen, something
that has been widely discussed in recent years, is stymied by our ignorance
of how carbon cycles work below the waves, says Smith, who dismisses this
idea as unrealistic. But farming the oceans might work.
Last year, Brian Walsh at the IIASA made the case for cultivating
microalgae on a massive scale. The microalgae could be used as fuel for
BECCS power stations or as animal feed, replacing soy and other land-hungry
crops. Prototype microalgae farms are at work in Australia. By mid-century,
there could be up to 50 million hectares of them growing billions of tonnes
of biomass.
Walsh estimates that such an expanse of microalgae could absorb up to 25 Gt
of CO2 a year. It might take a while to get going at scale. But even at a
quarter of Walsh’s rate, just 20 years could deliver the remaining 125 Gt
needed to reach Rogelj’s 500 Gt target, while feeding up to 10 per cent of
the world’s livestock. Forests could be saved for nature; fields for
growing food; and global warming could be capped at 1.5 °C.
Whether this will work depends on how well we know the climate. If we are
unlucky, and greenhouse gases have a greater impact on temperatures than we
think, then the chance of hitting 1.5 °C is zero. If current sensitivity
estimates are right, then we stand a chance. We can dream. Or perhaps the
world should get on with it and see if it works.
*1.5 °C versus 2 °C*
All plausible futures with just 1.5 °C of global warming require massive
negative emissions, says Joeri Rogelj of International Institute for
Applied Systems Analysis in Austria (see main story). On the other hand, we
could have a 2 °C world simply by kicking our carbon habit. No negative
emissions required. Is the extra effort worth it?
Yes, says Johan Rockström, director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre:
“Two degrees contains significant risks for societies everywhere.” By
contrast, 1.5 °C could prevent the disappearance of Arctic sea ice, save
forests, dramatically reduce the risk of crop failures in sub-Saharan
Africa, and curb sea level rise. Michiel Schaeffer of Wageningen University
in the Netherlands calculates that 1.5 °C would limit sea level rise over
the next two centuries to 1.5 metres, whereas 2 °C would lock in 2.7
metres. That is good news
<http://climateanalytics.org/files/schaeffer_et_al__2012__long-term_slr.pdf>
for low-lying island states such as Kiribati, an archipelago of Pacific
atolls none of which rises more than 2 metres above the waves. Kiribati led
the push in Paris for the conference to adopt a 1.5 °C target.
Anything more, it argued, would consign their nation to oblivion.
But peeking barely 50 centimetres above the waves will not save many island
states. There will be no high ground to run to when seasonal hurricanes
throw storm surges at their shores. Pacific atoll nations – those most
fixed on a 1.5 °C target – may be doomed already.
*This article appeared in print under the headline “Hello, cool world”*
Leader: “Aircraft and ships must not be exempt from emissions cuts
<https://www.newscientist.com/article/2077790-aircraft-and-ships-must-not-be-exempt-from-emissions-cuts/>
”
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