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Amir Kassam <[log in to unmask]>
Sun, 22 Dec 2019 21:34:46 +0000
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*Global CA-CoP* *CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE*

*for sustainable agriculture and land management*

Dear Subscribers,

Please see herebelow the post from Biolplan regarding the state of the
global biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Apologies for any cross-posting.

*Amir Kassam *

*Moderator*

*Global CA-CoP*

e-mail: [log in to unmask]

URL: http://www.fao.org/conservation-agriculture



*Conservation Agriculture is an ecosystem approach to regenerative
sustainable agriculture and land management based on the practical
application of context-specific and locally adapted three interlinked
principles of: (i) Continuous no or minimum mechanical soil disturbance
(no-till seeding/planting and weeding, and minimum soil disturbance with
all other farm operations including harvesting);  (ii) permanent
maintenance of soil mulch cover (crop biomass, stubble and cover crops);
and (iii) diversification of cropping system (economically, environmentally
and socially adapted rotations and/or sequences and/or associations
involving annuals and/or perennials, including legumes and cover crops),
along with other complementary good agricultural production and land
management practices. Conservation Agriculture systems are present in all
continents, involving rainfed and irrigated systems including annual
cropland systems, perennial systems, orchards and plantation systems,
agroforestry systems, crop-livestock systems, pasture and rangeland
systems, organic production systems and rice-based systems. Conservation
Tillage, Reduced Tillage and Minimum Tillage are not Conservation
Agriculture, and nor is No-Till on its own* (more at:
http://www.fao.org/conservation-agriculture).


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: David Duthie <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2019 at 21:47
Subject: The last post
To: bioplan <[log in to unmask]>


Dear BIOPLANNERS,


This will be my last post – for 2019, so I will end with some “good news”
about bad news.


This “good news” is that the lead authors of the recent IPBES global
biodiversity assessment have distilled the bad news about the state of
global biodiversity and ecosystem services and their contribution to nature
from the full assessment report
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fipbes.net%2Fglobal-assessment-report-biodiversity-ecosystem-services&data=02%7C01%7Cbioplan%40groups.undp.org%7C5b515143d8bc4d1a2c4f08d783e4dcc2%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C1%7C637122891295293574&sdata=1q5zrxMUG%2BvXDXGBmi%2BXi%2FUcjwtXjknKIklGDJKWOqg%3D&reserved=0>
into a new 12 page article just published in the journal Science. Here are
the metadata:


Díaz, Sandra et al. (2019) ‘*Pervasive Human-Driven Decline of Life on
Earth Points to the Need for Transformative Change*’, Science, 366,
eaax3100 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.aax3100
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdx.doi.org%2F10.1126%2Fscience.aax3100&data=02%7C01%7Cbioplan%40groups.undp.org%7C5b515143d8bc4d1a2c4f08d783e4dcc2%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C1%7C637122891295303570&sdata=V3T9%2F7kx8g4uare7pCzNb4Rxzw93lLyW1oW3xYJE26k%3D&reserved=0>>
(free access)

Abstract: The human impact on life on Earth has increased sharply since the
1970s, driven by the demands of a growing population with rising average
per capita income. Nature is currently supplying more materials than ever
before, but this has come at the high cost of unprecedented global declines
in the extent and integrity of ecosystems, distinctness of local ecological
communities, abundance and number of wild species, and the number of local
domesticated varieties. Such changes reduce vital benefits that people
receive from nature and threaten the quality of life of future generations.
Both the benefits of an expanding economy and the costs of reducing
nature’s benefits are unequally distributed. The fabric of life on which we
all depend—nature and its contributions to people—is unravelling rapidly.
Despite the severity of the threats and lack of enough progress in tackling
them to date, opportunities exist to change future trajectories through
transformative action. Such action must begin immediately, however, and
address the root economic, social, and technological causes of nature’s
deterioration.

In addition to the bad news, the article clearly articulates the direct and
indirect drivers that need to be tackled and adds a bit of detail to the
“transformative change” they conclude is urgently needed and provides some
figures and a hyperlinked reference list that make the article a very
useful resource.



The article highlights the trade-offs that will need to be navigated to
meet the triple challenges of climate change loss of biodiversity and food
security, amongst others, and flag large-scale land-based climate
mitigation through BECCS as one such concern.



A new review on the future of bioenergy provides an excellent analysis of
the (not so) hidden assumptions and caveats surrounding BECCS; see



Reid, Walter V, Mariam K Ali, & Christopher B Field (2019) ‘*The Future of
Bioenergy*’, Global Change Biology, n/a (2019), 93 <
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14883
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdx.doi.org%2F10.1111%2Fgcb.14883&data=02%7C01%7Cbioplan%40groups.undp.org%7C5b515143d8bc4d1a2c4f08d783e4dcc2%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C1%7C637122891295303570&sdata=VBj%2BriRuLZPAH1CDNAGklRClB7f7MG7WGOolOmDRHt4%3D&reserved=0>>
(open access)



Abstract: Energy from biomass plays a large and growing role in the global
energy system. Energy from biomass can make significant contributions to
reducing carbon emissions, especially from difficult‐to‐decarbonize sectors
like aviation, heavy transport, and manufacturing. But land‐intensive
bioenergy often entails substantial carbon emissions from land‐use change
as well as production, harvesting, and transportation. In addition,
land‐intensive bioenergy scales only with the utilization of vast amounts
of land, a resource that is fundamentally limited in supply. Because of the
land constraint, the intrinsically low yields of energy per unit of land
area, and rapid technological progress in competing technologies, land
intensive bioenergy makes the most sense as a transitional element of the
global energy mix, playing an important role over the next few decades and
then fading, probably after mid‐century. Managing an effective trajectory
for land‐intensive bioenergy will require an unusual mix of policies and
incentives that encourage appropriate utilization in the short term but
minimize lock‐in in the longer term.



The above abstract mentions the need for biofuels for “difficult to
decarbonize sectors like aviation”, so here are a couple of links from that
sector, the first showing that, in addition to requiring a very large
amount of biofuel, the sector’s Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for
International Aviation (CORSIA), recently described as the “The
Extraordinary Climate Agreement on International Aviation
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.belfercenter.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Ffiles%2Fpublication%2F191021-anjaparidze-viewpoint.pdf&data=02%7C01%7Cbioplan%40groups.undp.org%7C5b515143d8bc4d1a2c4f08d783e4dcc2%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C1%7C637122891295313570&sdata=MrgrYW8jgdYBDx1nl%2B7ymYkVpmAXj12KrQot%2FMlExlk%3D&reserved=0>”
(it is!) will also require huge amounts of carbon offsets, and the second
covering the recent news of a fully electric commercial plane fight; see
here
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dezeen.com%2F2019%2F12%2F17%2Fworlds-first-commercial-electric-plane-canada-seaplane%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cbioplan%40groups.undp.org%7C5b515143d8bc4d1a2c4f08d783e4dcc2%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C1%7C637122891295313570&sdata=Gl5HrO1%2B3XnyGYE9hp4EjTbt2057E%2BcDcwGI8wyTty4%3D&reserved=0>
– including video of the entire flight (make sure you read the last
sentence in the article!).



Widening the net a bit on NETs, here are links to a short article
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fissues.org%2Fsciences-publics-politics-carbon-removal%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cbioplan%40groups.undp.org%7C5b515143d8bc4d1a2c4f08d783e4dcc2%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C1%7C637122891295313570&sdata=rT2wsroRNQViqFTptcipoPKevyENiRnLVgWIUZPcFFE%3D&reserved=0>
and longer report
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.american.edu%2Fsis%2Fcenters%2Fcarbon-removal%2Fupload%2Fcarbon-removal-debate.pdf&data=02%7C01%7Cbioplan%40groups.undp.org%7C5b515143d8bc4d1a2c4f08d783e4dcc2%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C1%7C637122891295323558&sdata=b0b9leAmb05sLazJ5kJ%2Fz0j0iWaoMIK7M47OmYspHIs%3D&reserved=0>
by Matthew C. Nisbet for the Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy,
American University on how carbon removal is by no means a “quick fix” for
the climate challenge.



Finally, and becoming as regular as Xmas itself, Bill Sutherland and
colleagues have recently published their latest “Horizon Scan of Emerging
Global Biological Conservation Issues for 2020
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cell.com%2Farticle%2FS016953471930299X%2Ffulltext&data=02%7C01%7Cbioplan%40groups.undp.org%7C5b515143d8bc4d1a2c4f08d783e4dcc2%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C1%7C637122891295323558&sdata=SW1YuyV49USaUE1hhBhdz7H7k%2B6015YJhLOqBTPtIJ4%3D&reserved=0>”
(free access and summarised here
<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fensia.com%2Fnotable%2Fbiodiversity-conservation-2020%2F&data=02%7C01%7Cbioplan%40groups.undp.org%7C5b515143d8bc4d1a2c4f08d783e4dcc2%7Cb3e5db5e2944483799f57488ace54319%7C0%7C1%7C637122891295333558&sdata=gwviVJ2WgA1RxcClxsd2ZcpZf2Pk7%2FesYEmDonzpqE0%3D&reserved=0>)
– as if we did not have enough problems already!



Best  wishes to all for Xmas and the New Year.



David Duthie



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