Global CA-CoP CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE COMMUNITY OF

for sustainable agriculture, land use and ecosystem management


Dear Subscribers,

Please see some interesting items mentioned by David Duthie in his latest post on publications and news related to climate change.

Apologies for any cross-posting.

Amir Kassam

Moderator

Global CA-CoP

e-mail: [log in to unmask]

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

 

Regional CA websites:

URL: http://www.act-africa.org/

URL: https://ecaf.org/
URL:
http://www.caa-ap.org/

URL: http://caapas.org/

 


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: David Duthie <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 16 Sept 2022 at 08:07
Subject: Will we get hysterical about (climate) hysteresis?
To: bioplan <[log in to unmask]>


Dear BIOPLANNERS,


Whilst keeping my powder dry on our chances of ever getting to net-zero emissions, most people implicitly think that, once there, our climate problems are mostly over, including climate change as an ever bigger drive of biodiversity loss.


A couple of articles in this month’s Nature Climate Change journal open a Pandora’s Box of potential post net-zero problems that the authors argue need to be given a good deal of attention and which made me think that biodiversity planners also need to be thinking about the (possible) shape(s) of the post net-zero world now also.


Here are the metadata of the two articles, plus a link to a useful summary of their own research by the authors of the second piece.


King, Andrew D. et al. (2022) Preparing for a post-net-zero world. Nature Climate Change; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01446-x (free access)

Current greenhouse gas emissions will continue to affect the climate even after we reach net-zero emissions. We must understand how and prepare for a cooling planet.


************

Kim, Soong-Ki  et al. (2022)  Widespread irreversible changes in surface temperature and precipitation in response to CO2 forcing. Nature Climate Change; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01452-z (OA)

 Some climate variables do not show the same response to declining atmospheric CO2 concentrations as before the preceding increase. A comprehensive understanding of this hysteresis effect and its regional patterns is, however, lacking. Here we use an Earth system model with an idealized CO2 removal scenario to show that surface temperature and precipitation exhibit globally widespread irreversible changes over a timespan of centuries. To explore the climate hysteresis and reversibility on a regional scale, we develop a quantification method that visualizes their spatial patterns. Our experiments project that 89% and 58% of the global area experiences irreversible changes in surface temperature and precipitation, respectively. Strong irreversible response of surface temperature is found in the Southern Ocean, Arctic and North Atlantic Ocean and of precipitation in the tropical Pacific, global monsoon regions and the Himalayas. These global hotspots of irreversible changes can indicate elevated risks of negative impacts on developing countries. For some parts of the climate system, the response to declining CO2 concentrations does not mirror that during the preceding increase. Here the authors quantify this effect for temperature and precipitation, and show that large areas of the world show an asymmetric response to CO2 forcing.


************

Kim, Soong-Ki & Soon-Il An Yonsei (2022) Unravelling global patterns of irreversible climate change. Nature Climate Change; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01456-9 (free access)

Even if greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere are reduced to pre-industrial levels, the climate system might not return to its previous state. Quantification of the spatial patterns of climate hysteresis and reversibility reveals globally widespread irreversible changes in surface temperature and precipitation in response to anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

************

Both articles focus on the hysteresis – path dependency – of possible climate futures and how some may prevent any return to previous Holocene-like conditions, even with net-negative emissions.  A prime example is the possible “savannisation” of the Amazon – one of a range of looming tipping points recently reviewed here


Additionally, and depending on how long it takes to get to net zero, all of those species which managed to adapt by tracking their existing thermal (ecological) niche during warming may be forced to keep tracking the same during any anthropogenic cooling phase - arggh!


After perhaps too much staring into the hazy crystal ball of our future anthropogenic world, here are a couple of other selections from my readings this week.


First up, a poignant piece from The New Yorker about the “índio do buraco” or “the Indian of the hole”, an uncontacted solitary Indigenous person who, after 26 years living alone in the Amazon forest, has passed away - the “extinction of a tribe, a language, and a culture that history never named” as author Monte Reel ends his article, which can be accessed (free) here.


Finally, although most of you will have probably heard about the remarkable announcement made by Yvon Chouinard, the founder of outdoor clothing company, Patagonia, to divert the company profits to climate action, I am pasting below the free article from The Guardian, which provides more details of the arrangement and some great quotes from Yvon and his CEO, Charles Conn – do follow the link, in the article below, to his Fortune piece, also worth reading.


Finally, something that smells really transformative and hopefully paves the way for more companies to move towards a more steady-state economic model.


Best wishes


David Duthie


 ****************

Bioplan is a list server run jointly by UNDP and UNEP. To join / leave bioplan, email: [log in to unmask] with "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" in the subject line. Please note: If you wish to reply to the sender only you must create a new message addressed only to that individual, or forward the message to that individual. Using the "reply" or "reply all" option delivers your response to the list administrator.

****************

Patagonia’s billionaire owner gives away company to fight climate crisis

Founder Yvon Chouinard announced that all the company’s profits will go into saving the planet

Erin McCormick

 

Thu 15 Sep 2022

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/14/patagonias-billionaire-owner-gives-away-company-to-fight-climate-crisis-yvon-chouinard


Setting a new example in environmental corporate leadership, the billionaire owner of Patagonia is giving the entire company away to fight the Earth’s climate devastation, he announced on Wednesday.


Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, who turned his passion for rock climbing into one of the world’s most successful sportswear brands, is giving the entire company to a uniquely structured trust and nonprofit, designed to pump all of the company’s profits into saving the planet.


“As of now, Earth is our only shareholder,” the company announced. “ALL profits, in perpetuity, will go to our mission to ‘save our home planet’.”


Chouinard, 83, worked with his wife and two children as well as teams of company lawyers to create a structure that will allow Patagonia to continue to operate as a for-profit company whose proceeds will go to benefit environmental efforts.


If we have any hope of a thriving planet – much less a thriving business – 50 years from now, it is going to take all of us doing what we can with the resources we have,” said Chouinard in a statement. “This is another way we’ve found to do our part.


Chouinard’s family donated 2% of all stock and all decision-making authority to a trust, which will oversee the company’s mission and values. The other 98% of the company’s stock will go to a nonprofit called the Holdfast Collective, which “will use every dollar received to fight the environmental crisis, protect nature and biodiversity, and support thriving communities, as quickly as possible,” according to the statement.


Each year, the money Patagonia makes after reinvesting in the business will be distributed to the nonprofit to help fight the environmental crisis.


The structure, the statement said, was designed to avoid selling the company or taking it public, which could have meant a change in its values.


Instead of ‘going public’, you could say we’re ‘going purpose’,” said Chouinard. “Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth for investors, we’ll use the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source of all wealth.


Patagonia’s new direction is designed to set an example that disproves the old shareholder capitalism axiom that corporate goals other than profit will just confuse investors, wrote Patagonia board chair Charles Conn in an opinion piece in Fortune magazine on Wednesday.


Instead of exploiting natural resources to make shareholder returns, we are turning shareholder capitalism on its head by making the Earth our only shareholder,” he wrote.


Chouinard and Patagonia have long been groundbreakers in environmental activism and employee benefits. In its nearly 50 years in operation, the Ventura, California-based company has been known for extensive benefits for employees, including on-site nurseries and afternoons off on good surf days.


In the 80s, the company began donating 1% of its sales to environmental groups, a program formalized in 2001 as the “1% for the Planet Scheme”. The program has resulted in $140m in donations for preservation and restoration of the natural environment, according to the company.


Patagonia was one of the earliest companies to become a b-Corp, submitting to certification as meeting certain environmental and social standards, and recently it changed its mission to state: “We’re in business to save our home planet.”

Chouinard, the famously eccentric entrepreneur who started his business fashioning metal climbing pitons (or spikes to wedge into cracks while rock climbing) and lived out of his van at climbing destinations for many years, was horrified to be seen as a billionaire, he told the New York Times.


I was in Forbes magazine listed as a billionaire, which really, really pissed me off,” he said. “I don’t have $1bn in the bank. I don’t drive Lexuses.


The Chouinard family are at the forefront of charitable giving, philanthropy and trust experts told the New York Times.


“This family is a way outlier when you consider that most billionaires give only a tiny fraction of their net worth away every year,” David Callahan, founder of the website Inside Philanthropy, told the newspaper.



To unsubscribe from the CA-Cop-L list, click the following link:
&*TICKET_URL(CA-Cop-L,SIGNOFF);