How Carbon Farming Can Help Solve Climate Change

The Conversation - David Burton

More carbon stays in the soil when farmers leave their fields alone between harvesting and planting. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations pledged to keep the average global temperature rise to below 2C above pre-industrial levels and to take efforts to narrow that increase to 1.5C. To meet those goals we must not only stop the increase in our greenhouse gas emissions, we must also draw large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere.
The simplest, most cost effective and environmentally beneficial way to do this is right under our feet. We can farm carbon by storing it in our agricultural soils.
Soils are traditionally rich in carbon. They can contain as much as five per cent carbon by weight, in the form of soil organic matter — plant and animal matter in various stages of decomposition.
But with the introduction of modern agricultural techniques, including the plow, soil organic matter content has dropped by half in many areas of the world, including parts of Canada. That carbon, once stored in the ground, is now found in the atmosphere and oceans as CO2 and is contributing to global warming.
The organic compounds found in soil are the glue that hold soil particles together and help give the soil structure. Like the walls of a building, this structure creates openings and passageways that allow the soil to conduct and store water, contain air, resist soil erosion and provide a habitat for soil organisms.
Plowing breaks apart soil aggregates and allows microorganisms to eat the soil organic compounds. In the short-term, the increased microbial activity releases nutrients, boosting crop productivity. In the long-term the loss of structure reduces the soil’s ability to hold water and resist erosion. Ultimately, crop productivity drops.

How can we make soil organic matter?
First and foremost, we need to disturb soil less. The advent of no-till and reduced tillage methods have allowed us to increase the carbon content of soils.
No-till and direct-seeding methods place the seed directly into the soil, minimizing the disturbance associated with seedbed preparation. The lack of disturbance allows the roots and crop residues from the previous crops to form soil organic matter. It reduces the degradation of the soil organic matter already present in the soil.

Farmers in Virginia check the outcome of their no-till farming practices. (USDA), CC BY

In Canada, we are already benefiting from reduced tillage. In the Prairies, no-tillage agriculture has increased from less than five per cent of the land area in the early 1990s to almost 50 per cent in 2006.
The situation is a bit more complex in Eastern Canada. The region’s soil type and climate make it less easy to build soil organic matter. At Dalhousie’s Atlantic Soil Health Lab, we are exploring the potential of various cropping practices to increase soil organic matter content in the soils of Atlantic Canada. While the potential to store carbon may not be as great as in Western Canada, the benefits of increased soil organic matter content are far greater because of the critically low levels of organic matter.
Secondly, we can use more diverse crop rotations. Forage crops — such as grasses, clovers and alfalfa — penetrate the soil with extensive root systems that lead to the formation of soil organic matter. Short rotations dominated by crops that have poor root systems (corn, soybeans) are not effective in building soil organic matter.
Farmers can also build soil organic matter by adding organic amendments such as animal manure, composts, forestry residues (wood chips) or biosolids to the soil.
Using the right amount of fertilizer is also important. Fertilizers can improve plant growth, lead to larger roots and add more plant matter to the soil in the unharvested portion of the crop. However, too much nitrogen fertilizer can result in the production of the powerful greenhouse gas nitrous oxide and offset the benefit of increased soil organic matter formation.

Farmers need economic incentives
Project Drawdown, a non-profit organization that researches solutions to global warming, has estimated that global farmland restoration (building soil organic matter) could remove 14 gigatones (billion tonnes) of CO2.
This would reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere below the current 400 parts per million — a level unpassed for several million years — while developing more fertile, resilient soils to feed people for years to come and keep forests intact.
These approaches seem like obvious solutions. Why are they not more widely adopted? The short answer is economics.
The benefits of drawing down CO2 and building soil organic matter play out over decades. But the costs associated with these practices often do not have increased returns in the short-term.
Farmers often make decisions in response to short-term economic pressures and government policies. Improved soil management is a public good. We need economic tools and short-term incentives that encourage producers to adopt these practices for the good of all.

Links

• Australia’s plantation boom has gone bust, so let’s make them carbon farms
• Carbon farming: a solution to global land degradation and poverty?
• Sharing economy sounds caring, but let’s put it to the ethical city test
• How one region is planning ahead to help farmers cope with climate change

Fiji Told It Must Spend Billions To Adapt To Climate Change

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

At COP 23 talks in Bonn, Fiji has called on developed nations to help the world’s most vulnerable build resilience to climate change

Fijian girl walks over flooded land in Fiji after severe tropical cyclone Winston in 2016. A new report predicts floods will occur every second year if global emissions aren’t abated. Photograph: chameleonseye/Getty Images

To prepare for the rising temperatures, strengthening storms and higher sea levels in the coming decades, Fiji must spend an amount equivalent to its entire yearly gross domestic product over the next 10 years, according to the first comprehensive assessment of the small island nation’s vulnerability to climate change, compiled by its government with the assistance of the World Bank.
Released half-way through the COP23 in Bonn, which Fiji is presiding over, the report highlights five major interventions and 125 further actions that it says are necessary to achieve Fiji’s development objectives, while facing the potentially devastating impacts of climate change. Combined those actions would cost about US$4.5bn over the next decade.
The report concluded that some parts of the country, especially those on low-lying outer islands, could be made uninhabitable by sea level rise and increased storm surges. It recommended existing towns and cities be made more resilient, but also for brand new and resilient greenfield sites to be constructed to house the growing population.
In light of the results, the World Bank and Fiji called for the world to lift its ambitions in fighting climate change, and also for the developed world to help the world’s most vulnerable people adapt and build resilience to climate change.
“The results of the [Climate Vulnerability Assessment] reinforce what we already know to be true – that the situation we face is urgent and the world needs to immediately raise its ambition to tackle this great threat,” said Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, Fiji’s attorney general and minister responsible for climate change in a foreword to the report.
But he said the report itself would assist in that happening, since it “provides a specific blueprint that quantifies the resources necessary to climate-proof Fiji, giving us a full account of the threat that climate change poses to our national development.”
Victoria Kwakwa, vice president, East Asia and the Pacific at the World Bank said the Paris Agreement was not just a commitment to keeping global temperature rise well below 2C, but “also a global commitment to help build resilience and adaptation capacity among vulnerable countries – especially those most at risk from climate change, such as Small Island Developing States.”
In the report, Fiji called on the world to take “drastic action that limits greenhouse gas emission while supporting action to enhance resilience.”
It notes that Fiji has limited capacity to manage those risks itself, and that investment from other nations was needed.
The biggest investment needed to build resilience in the country was into transport, where US$228m was needed each year, the report found. A detailed analysis in the report found specific parts of the road network that were critical for the country, and should be strengthened to protect against worsening storms.
Significant sums were needed to protect the country’s water, health and education facilities, housing and environmental assets.
“These investments and expenditures would have resilience-related benefits that extend over decades – far beyond their implementation period – as well as significant non-resilience benefits, improving the population’s well-being and development prospects,” the report found.
Fiji is expected to face as much as a metre of sea level rise by the end of the century, increasing the risk of coastal flooding, with flood events that currently happen only once a century expected to recur every second year if global emissions are not abated.
In just a few decades – by 2050 – the fraction of the country’s GDP lost every year due to tropical cyclones is expected to increase by up to 50%, reaching more than 6.5%. That estimate didn’t include the additional risk caused by sea level rise, which would magnify it further.
The report also concluded that some parts of the country, especially those on low-lying outer islands, could be made uninhabitable by sea level rise and increased storm surges.
It also highlighted the impacts climate change would have on Fiji’s health system, with water-borne diseases and respiratory diseases expected to worsen. “These health issues threaten the Fiji population and will challenge the health care system, and could also have a negative impact of some key sectors of the economy, especially the tourism sector, which is highly vulnerable to negative risk perceptions,” the report said.
Coming less than two years after Tropical Cyclone Winston devastated the country, killing 44 people and costing the economy 20% of its GDP, the findings are likely to raise some attention at COP23.
In a statement released with the report, prime minister of Fiji and current president of COP23 Voreqe “Frank” Bainimarama said: “As the president of the COP23 and on behalf of the small island nations, and building on the findings of this report, Fiji is asking the world for drastic action on climate change-building resilience through adaptation and reducing greenhouse gas emissions so that climate change does not impose a limit to our development and the aspiration of our people to live in their own lands.”
The talks going on this week and next at COP23 are focused on writing the “rulebook” for implementing the Paris Agreement – including how countries will be required to “ratchet up” their commitments to achieve the agreed aims.

Links

• Politicians and activists gather for COP23 Bonn climate talks - in pictures
• Bonn climate talks must go further than Paris pledges to succeed
• The COP23 climate change summit in Bonn and why it matters
• The three-degree world: the cities that will be drowned by global warming
• Fiji PM invites Trump to meet cyclone victims in climate change appeal – video
• Fiji becomes first country in the world to ratify Paris agreement
• Pacific islands make last-ditch plea to world before Paris climate change talks
• Fiji PM decries Australia's 'climate change deniers' in Turnbull cabinet
• Besieged by the rising tides of climate change, Kiribati buys land in Fiji

Climate Change: A Catalyst For Conflict

Deutsche Welle - Matthias von Hein

African ranchers are forced to seek new pastures after traditional grazing lands have dried up, putting them on a collision course with local farmers. In some areas, lands previously herded are being used for farming.

In mid-October, people in the central Nigerian village of Nkyie Doghwro desperately sought shelter in a schoolhouse. Yet they did so in vain. Ultimately, 29 of them lost their lives; the victims of an ongoing conflict between ranchers and farmers in the region.
Over the last 15 years more than 60,000 people have died in this forgotten conflict – almost four times as many as have been killed by the terror group Boko Haram.
Conflict between ranchers and farmers is a classic motif in Hollywood westerns. But conflict is also very much part of everyday life in many African nations – and the reality of it is far more brutal than that which is portrayed on the silver screen.
Such conflict becomes unavoidable when ranchers seek new pastures after traditional grazing lands dry up, just as it does when climate change forces farmers to plant in areas where cattle had previously been herded. Such conflicts feature in this year's edition of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's (SIPRI) annual report.

Farmers in Nigeria are having increasing difficulty finding enough land to graze cattle

In an interview with DW, SIPRI director Dan Smith stressed the link between climate change and security: "The effects of climate change, alongside other social, economic and political components, contribute to the violence with which conflicts are resolved."
In 2012, several agencies within the United States' intelligence community prepared a report that predicted: "Many countries that are of strategic importance to the USA will suffer water shortages or flooding over the next 10 years."
The report added that such situations would increase the risk of instability or even lead to failed state status as well as contributing to regional conflict.

Climate change as a threat magnifier
That said, one cannot draw a direct connection between climate change and violent conflict, as the causes that lead to bloody conflict are often too complex to allow such mapping. Therefore, it is perhaps more helpful to think of climate change as a threat amplifier.
That is how Rob van Riet of the World Future Council describes the relationship between climate and conflict.
Van Riet expanded on that thought when speaking with DW: "Existing threats – like resource shortages, poverty, famine, terrorism or extreme ideology – are only amplified by climate change."

Water scarcity and food expense in Syria added to social chaos and fulled the conflict

SIPRI's Dan Smith also warns that the effects of climate change – from droughts to floods – are not simply local phenomena. He points out that extreme weather situations affect global food prices, and that those rising prices also fuel conflict. "Whenever global food prices go up we see demonstrations, rioting and ultimately lasting social and political instability in 30 or 40 countries at the same time," the SIPRI director observed.
When asked which regions most clearly illustrated that relationship, Smith pointed to North Africa and the Middle East: "Climate change can be clearly recognized within the complex mosaic of causes of conflict in Syria, Egypt and Yemen."
Rob van Riet also sees Syria as a prime example of climate change as a driver of conflict. In the mid-2000s, large numbers of farmers were forced to give up their livelihood and move to already hopelessly overpopulated cities as a result of the worst droughts the country had ever seen.
"Water became scarce and food expensive. The resulting suffering and social chaos added to ongoing conflicts that eventually spun out of control and ultimately led to the conflict that we are witnessing today," says the World Future Council climate expert.

Flooding in Karachi, Pakistan

Rob van Riet is also gravely concerned about how nuclear powers like Pakistan will deal with the effects of climate change. He says that Pakistan is especially vulnerable, which can be seen in the massive flooding that takes place there annually.
"Beyond the fact that such floods immediately deprive people of their livelihoods, they also have a direct influence on nuclear security," emphasized van Riet in a DW interview.

Fleeing from a changing environment 

The Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya houses almost 250,000 people

It is clear that the economic effects of climate change are dramatic, and that social effects are as well. The Berlin-based Mercator Research Institute on Climate Change (MCC) is currently analyzing the scope of economic damages caused by climate change.
Matthias Kalkuhl, who heads MCC's working group on economic growth and human change, is closely studying 1,400 regions around the world, and told DW: "On average, about 10 percent of a region's economic output – and up to 20 percent in tropical counties – is lost to sinking agricultural and labor productivity caused by climate change – those are substantial numbers!"
And Kalkuhl did not factor damages from extreme weather catastrophes such as hurricanes or long-term issues such as rising sea levels into the equation.
When entire regions become impoverished it can lead to mass migration, which can, in turn, lead to increased tensions within a country or even beyond its borders.
Speaking with DW, Kalkuhl points back to the discussions that accompanied the refugee debate in Germany when "roughly a million people arrived here within a relatively short period of time, throwing the political system into chaos. Therefore, it is very hard to predict how societies will cope with mass population movements."

Right-wing extremism in Germany has risen since the influx of refugees in 2015

So what can be done? The question grows even more complex due to the fact that, in a best case scenario, it would take decades to asses the effects of intelligent climate policy. Will we even see such measures enacted? SIPRI director Dan Smith thinks that an institution serving under the aegis of the United Nations is what is needed.
The institution, he says, would be tasked with assessing security risks. It would then pass its findings on to other UN organizations such as the Security Council, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs or the World Food Program.
"In one way or another, these organizations will all be affected by climate change related security risks over the next several years," says Smith.


Lobbying behind the scenes at UN climate talks

Links

• Climate change burden unfairly borne by world's poorest countries
• 'Climate change allows terrorists to thrive'
• Conflict as Lake Chad vanishes
• Climate Change Will Displace Tens of Millions in Next Decade: Report
• Climate change 'will create world's biggest refugee crisis'
• Climate change to displace‘tens of millions’