Published: December 4, 2017
Two years have passed since the 4 per 1000 Initiative was first launched in Paris on December 1, 2015. Learn more about the global plan to naturally increase carbon in soils via this brief overview on the progress of the 4p1000 Initiative.
Imagine this: You’re at a secluded space with 25,000 people from all over the world. This space has been created exclusively for the purpose of hosting an international meeting. Once you leave, this space will be dismantled and there will be no trace of its existence.
To enter this space, you need a special badge. To obtain this badge you need to follow a number of steps that include providing copious amounts of personal information and eventually, if you fulfill all the requirements, you’ll be granted a pass.
Once you arrive to this space, you have to follow strict security measures to enter, but once there, you’re provided with everything you may need: an arguably secure Internet connection, colorful stall bathrooms with signs that indicate the correct position to sit on the toilet, a water bottle that can be refilled at any of the water stations that have been set up, really expensive food with up to 20% of organic ingredients guaranteed and multiple outlets to plug in your phone or computer. You also find a computer center with printers, screens indicating the gazillion panels and side events happening simultaneously at the space, and plenty of sandwiches, canapés, coffee and even sometimes wine or cocktails—depending on the time of the day—given to you for free by event organizers with the only condition that you do attend their event.
There is a blue zone (here Bula zone, the most common way to greet in Fiji, the country that co-hosts this event) and a green zone (in this case the Bonn zone). People move in waves from the blue zone, where official negotiations take place to the green zone where side events and some high-level meetings happen.
In the middle of these two areas, which for practical and visual purposes I’ll call cyan, you can stand for hours watching thousands of people from all nationalities, languages, cultures and ethnicities moving back and forth, trying to get a meeting with their country delegation, finding the meeting space where the best side event connected to their area of work or interest is, and lobbying governments or high level delegations to buy their latest idea to either mitigate or adapt to the inevitable: a warming planet.
All of this at a sterilized space that doesn’t let the very cold air from outside be felt or street smells or sounds to permeate. A space filled with screens, talking computers and lights, and virtual reality displays that makes it look like a scene from Blade Runner—the original one.
All these people have gathered with one purpose: limit the rise of temperatures below 2°C. They are aware of the fact that changes in climate are taking the elevator, and solutions and actions are taking the stairs. Perhaps the lack of enforcement and mandatory systems in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is part of the reason why this is happening? Or could it be the lack of appropriate and sufficient investment and funding in projects devoted to regenerating the system instead of degenerating it by producing, consuming and extracting the old way?
Whatever the reason, the thousands of people in the green, blue and cyan zones are afraid. And fear, as we know, is a bad adviser, mainly because it opens the door to those who come with magical solutions, pseudoscience, and smoke and mirrors, those who are often the ones who created the problem in the first place.
At COP23, which was held in Bonn, Germany from Nov. 6 – 17, those smoke and mirrors were known as geoengineering. Geoengineering proposals were covered in detail in the newspaper offered at COP. A particularly interesting article caught my attention. The title: “Risky last-minute options.” It compared Plan B (geoengineering) to a course of chemotherapy with high risks. Some of the examples for this Plan B, as addressed in the article, are the use of mirrors (positioned in near-Earth space, these mirrors will reflect the rays of the sun back into space), global reforestation, chemical substances (mostly sulphur, distributed by aircrafts in the upper echelons of the atmosphere to cool the Earth by reflecting the sunlight), white house roofs and roads, and redirecting the CO2 from fossil power plants into the Earth’s crust so that over time it converts into rock.
A delegation sent by the United States, a country that has withdrawn from the Paris agreement but knows big business when it sees it, was the strongest advocate for this science fiction, Plan B type of solutions. It makes sense that the United States would seek geoengineering as a financial opportunity and a way to continue emitting even when they know it is nothing but a dangerous patch that doesn’t attack the root causes of the problem.
But there was even more. I turned the official newspaper pages and found articles talking about another solution. I walked by the green, cyan and blue zones and saw booths with information about it. I attended panels and people discussed it. I heard it in the hallways as well. People were talking about Beccs. Beccs, or Bioenergy with Carbon Capture Storage, seems like the less crazy of the science fiction strategies. Except that it comes with a very high cost. What it does is it captures carbon from the air by growing trees, burning those trees to generate energy, and burying the emissions using carbon capture and storage. For the whole scheme to work, trees have to be replanted to continue the cycle.
This technology and all of its potential profitability is sponsored by ______ (fill in the blanks with the name of your favorite extractive corporation).
What are the potential effects of Beccs? This “technology” would cover acres with monoculture plantations, ruining woodland biodiversity and its capacity to suck carbon. It has been estimated that for Beccs to generate the necessary amount of negative emissions to hit 1.5C, 5 million square kilometers of land would be needed.– It would imply waiting for years to have the replacement trees ready to be burned and, fundamentally, it would displace millions of farmers and indigenous populations from their lands that would now be used as tree farmlands for burning creating more poverty, forced migration and food insecurity. Nothing that we haven’t seen before.
Clearly, human beings have a hard time thinking long term. Long term isn’t sexy or profitable, and doesn’t result in political electoral benefits. We created this spaces where we could make ourselves feel a little bit better about what we’re doing for future generations and pat each other on the back before we headed home, before this bubble where we coexisted for two weeks disappears and things become less urgent, and the planet is no longer in the spotlight.
But if we continue this way, if we don’t change the root causes of the problem, then this story will end soon. Perhaps it’s time for us to start writing our own novel, one where the main characters are those who have for centuries been neglected and persecuted.
A story that tells the tales of the many people who are, every day, doing something to better our planet, from regenerating the soils to creating more efficient and sustainable means of transportation, from defending biodiversity at the cost of risking or sacrificing their own lives, to those who are investing their time, minds and money to come up with real, non-threatening, holistic solutions that can solve the problem.
This, my friends, is not science fiction. This is something that’s happening all over the world and is happening now. It’s time for us to record, write and propagate this story. A story with deep, rich roots that go deep into the ground. A story that also sequesters carbon.
Ercilia Sahores is political director for Organic Consumers Association – Mexico, and a representative of Regeneration International.
Publicado:4 de diciembre 2017
Una nueva publicación apoyada por la FAO analiza la influencia de las políticas públicas en la promoción de la agroecología en ocho países de América Latina y el Caribe
La publicación de la Red Políticas Públicas y Desarrollo Rural en América Latina – creada con el apoyo de la FAO – destaca la agroecología como un modelo de producción que mira más allá de la mera productividad.
“La agroecología puede contribuir a promover sistemas alimentarios más justos y sostenibles al aplicar conceptos y principios ecológicos en el diseño y manejo de agro-ecosistemas, para optimizar las interacciones entre los seres humanos y el medioambiente,” explicó Luis Carlos Beduschi, Oficial de Políticas de la FAO.
Según la FAO, la agroecología puede apoyar a la seguridad alimentaria y nutricional, al mismo tiempo que fomenta la resiliencia y la adaptación al cambio climático.
Con esto, contribuye directamente al cumplimento de los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible (ODS), mediante una visión nueva y más compleja de lo que es la sostenibilidad económica, social y ambiental.
Regeneration International (RI) sent a small delegation to the COP23 Climate Summit in Bonn, Germany. Our delegation consisted of: a German-French, an English-French, a Zimbabwean and an Argentine. What sounds like the beginning of a joke—a German, an Englishman, a Zimbabwean and an Argentine walk into a bar—turned out to be a great combination of different skill sets, languages, cultures, experiences . . . and lots of porridge for breakfast.
The RI team set off for the COP23 Climate Summit with a clear mission and some concrete goals:
We’re pleased to report that we obtained some good results:
The mission of the 4 per 1000 Initiative, according to its website, is “to help member countries and organizations to develop projects, actions and programs based on scientific knowledge that lead to the protection and increase of stocks of soil organic carbon (SOC) at an ideal rate of 4/100 (0.4%) per year.”
This most recent meeting included a high-level segment in the morning, with agricultural ministers from several countries, including: the new French Minister (in a clear gesture from the new French government of the continuation of French support to the initiative); Spain, one of the biggest financial allies in support of the initiative; and Hungary and Tunisia. FAO Director Eduardo Mansur, UNCCD lead scientist Barron Orr, and several others also spoke at the meeting.
Highlights from the 4 per 1000 meeting include:
The event allowed RI to provide a positive communication space for a growing network of regenerators who are putting carbon back into the ground and doing it in a sustainable and natural way using organic regenerative farming and land-use practices.
Positive outcomes, potential threats
As with past climate summits, COP23 revealed what’s going right with the climate movement, and what’s not—the proverbial case of the good, the bad (or in this case, neutral) and the ugly.
We identified a few positive (“the good”) outcomes, including:
The Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture will work with the SBSTA and the UNFCCC’s Subsidiary Body of Implementation (the SBI) to address issues related to agriculture, so that the issue of agriculture as a climate solution moves beyond the scientific and technical aspects to implementation.
The focus of the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture includes:
RI will join countries, stakeholders and other observer organizations in submitting recommendations before the next session of subsidiary bodies in April-May 2018.
In addition to the above “good” outcomes, we observed a few that were a bit more on the “neutral” side, including:
And then, there’s the “ugly,” which we put in the “science fiction” portion of the COP23 program. Largely promoted by the U.S. lobby, military-like, risky climate “solutions,” such as geoengineering, popped up at almost every side event during the two-week summit.
So concerning is the geoengineering talk, that we devoted an entire article to it. Read our report on the impact these “solutions” could have on the planet and their potential for gaining traction, given their financial attractiveness to investors.
Ercilia Sahores is political director for the Organic Consumers Association – Mexico, and a representative of Regeneration International.
Por Fernando Bejarano | Publicado:4 de diciembre 2017
El 3 de diciembre es una conmemoración que fue establecida por las 400 organizaciones miembros de la Red de Acción internacional en Plaguicidas, (Pesticide Action Network ó PAN) en memoria de más de 500.000 personas intoxicadas y más de 16.000 personas fallecidas esa noche en Bophal, India, en 1984.
Esto debido al escape de 27 toneladas del gas tóxico metil isocianato, utilizado por la transnacional agroquímica Union Carbide para fabricar plaguicidas. Actualmente, más de 100.000 personas sufren enfermedades crónicas producto de esta catástrofe. Los muertos llegan a más de 25.000.
Desde que se adoptó el paradigma capitalista de la agricultura de monocultivos dependiente de insumos industriales con la “Revolución Verde”, impulsada por Estados Unidos en México y América Latina, el uso de plaguicidas han afectado la salud y el medio ambiente de nuestros pueblos, con efectos a la salud a corto y largo plazo. Además se ha contaminado el aire, suelos, aguas y alimentos causando profundos desequilibrios en los ecosistemas, graves impactos en la biodiversidad, deforestación y pérdida de la fertilidad de los suelos. En toda América Latina, se reporta la muerte masiva de abejas y polinizadores por neonicotinoides y por el uso indiscriminado de plaguicidas en los diferentes cultivos.
Publicado:18 de noviembre 2017
“Lo que tenía que hacerse aquí, ya está hecho”. Así se expresó durante la sesión plenaria de cierre de la COP23 Jan Szyszko, ministro de medio ambiente de Polonia, y el que será el presidente de la COP24, la próxima conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre Cambio Climático que se celebrará en Katowice, Polonia, en diciembre de 2018.
La cumbre del clima concluyó con la aprobación de un documento en el que los países se comprometen a evaluar sus emisiones de CO2 en el año 2018. El primer ministro de Fiji, Frank Bainimarama, presidente de la COP23, consideró que el texto aprobado en la cumbre es “un paso adelante para avanzar en la puesta en marcha del pacto alcanzado en 2015, si bien hay que ir más rápido en su implementación”.
Las conversaciones siguieron hasta altas horas de la madrugada en Bonn, después de momentos de parálisis en los que varios países trataron de modificar algunos de los puntos del Acuerdo de París.
Author: Alexis Rowell | Published: December 1, 2017
Charles and Perrine Hervé-Gruyer decided to become low impact farmers in 2006. It was a long and difficult initiation. He had been a sailor, she an international lawyer; their efforts to grow food without mechanisation or chemicals were often ridiculed in the early years. But their farm in Normandy, Bec Hellouin, is now established as the premier permaculture farm in France. It is also the source of a number of scientific studies showing that it’s possible to make a living wage by growing food using permaculture techniques on just a quarter of an acre of land. Their book “Miraculous Abundance” was recently published in English. Alexis Rowell, a stalwart of the early Transition movement in the UK and author of the Transition book on local government, interviewed them on behalf of Transition Culture.
Alexis Rowell, a stalwart of the early Transition movement in the UK and author of the Transition book on local government, interviewed them on behalf of Transition Culture.
What motivated you to become farmers? Charles, you were a sailor; Perrine, you were an international lawyer. That’s a long way from the world of agriculture!
Charles: Personally, I always dreamed of being a farmer, but I grew up in Paris where everybody told me that it wasn’t possible for a Parisian to become a farmer so, by default, I became a sailor! And when I had my school-boat [a French version of Operation Raleigh allowing young people to travel the world in an educational setting] we shared the life of many farming communities, mostly in the global south. And after years and years of spending time with these farmers I was almost jealous of the intimacy they had with nature. I wanted to discover for myself this intimacy with nature. And with Perrine we were determined to be politically engaged, to do something for the planet, for humanity, without taking ourselves too seriously.
Perrine: We started our personal transition and family transition at the same time. The first door we went through was self-sufficiency. I liked that idea very much. Producing the food for a family of two children (now four), doing as much as possible for ourselves, household cleaning products, cosmetics, personal hygiene products – that was more or less the ambition. When, in 2006, Charles said he’d really like to work the land, I said ok even though I absolutely didn’t get it, or rather I didn’t see myself doing it. I told myself it was passing phase, that he’d get over it. But he persevered and it was so hard he had to do so many things that I felt obliged to give him a hand, and soon we became 100% engaged, without, if I‘m honest, me being totally happy at the start. For sure we were in organic agriculture, we were using animal traction, but the sense of it all was missing for me. From 2006 to 2008 it was chaotic and then in 2008 it was in a chance email that we discovered permaculture and that made sense because it reconciled our desire to be politically active but for a cause.
Author: Jacques Leslie | Published: December 2, 2017
The last great hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change may lie in a substance so commonplace that we typically ignore it or else walk all over it: the soil beneath our feet.
The earth possesses five major pools of carbon. Of those pools, the atmosphere is already overloaded with the stuff; the oceans are turning acidic as they become saturated with it; the forests are diminishing; and underground fossil fuel reserves are being emptied. That leaves soil as the most likely repository for immense quantities of carbon.
Now scientists are documenting how sequestering carbon in soil can produce a double dividend: It reduces climate change by extracting carbon from the atmosphere, and it restores the health of degraded soil and increases agricultural yields. Many scientists and farmers believe the emerging understanding of soil’s role in climate stability and agricultural productivity will prompt a paradigm shift in agriculture, triggering the abandonment of conventional practices like tillage, crop residue removal, mono-cropping, excessive grazing and blanket use of chemical fertilizer and pesticide. Even cattle, usually considered climate change culprits because they belch at least 25 gallons of methane a day, are being studied as a potential part of the climate change solution because of their role in naturally fertilizing soil and cycling nutrients.
The climate change crisis is so far advanced that even drastically cutting greenhouse gas emissions won’t prevent a convulsive future by itself — the amount of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere ensures dire trouble ahead. The most plausible way out is to combine emission cuts with “negative-emission” or “drawdown” technologies, which pull greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and into the other pools. Most of these proposed technologies are forms of geoengineering, dubious bets on huge climate manipulations with a high likelihood of disastrous unintended consequences.
On the other hand, carbon sequestration in soil and vegetation is an effective way to pull carbon from the atmosphere that in some ways is the opposite of geoengineering. Instead of overcoming nature, it reinforces it, promoting the propagation of plant life to return carbon to the soil that was there in the first place — until destructive agricultural practices prompted its release into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. That process started with the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago and accelerated over the last century as industrial farming and ranching rapidly expanded.