Tag Archive for: Soil Carbon Sequestration

How ‘Natural Geoengineering’ Can Help Slow Global Warming

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Author: Oswald J. Schmitz

As natural wonders go, perhaps the most awe-inspiring is the annual migration of 1.2 million wildebeest flowing across East Africa’s vast Serengeti grassland. It would be a tragedy to lose these animals. But we almost did in the mid-20th century when, decimated by disease and poaching, their numbers crashed to 300,000.

The consequences of that collapse were profound. Much of the Serengeti ecosystem remained ungrazed. The accumulating dead and dried grass in turn became fuel for massive wildfires, which annually burned up to 80 percent of the area, making the Serengeti an important regional source of carbon dioxide emissions.

Then, conservation programs to eradicate disease and crack down on poaching led to the recovery of the wildebeest, restoring the grazing system and reversing the extent of the large-scale wildfires. Grazing now causes much of the carbon in grass to be released as animal dung, which is in turn incorporated by insects into soil reservoirs that are not prone to burning. The Serengeti ecosystem has now reverted to a carbon dioxide sink so large that it is estimated to offset all of East Africa’s current annual fossil fuel carbon emissions.

The wildebeest decline and recovery taught a valuable lesson, not only in how easy it is to loose an iconic animal species, but, more importantly, how the loss of a single species can have far-reaching ramifications for ecosystems — and the climate. Mounting evidence from ecological science is showing that one or a few animal species can help determine the amount of carbon that is exchanged between ecosystems and the atmosphere. It’s not that any single animal species by itself has a huge direct effect on the carbon budget. Rather, as the wildebeest case shows, by being an integral part of a larger food chain the species may trigger knock-on effects that grow through the chain to drive significant amounts of carbon into long-term storage on land or in the ocean.

Keep Reading in Yale Environment 360

Ruminants and methane: Not the fault of the animals

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Author: Alan Broughton

Cattle and sheep are blamed for contributing to greenhouse gases, belching out methane, and farmers in the future are likely to be taxed because of it.

The recent Green Left Weekly climate change liftout [issue #1078] calls for a drastic reduction in sheep and cattle numbers. There is a TV advertisement, urging people to “go vego to save the planet”. This is a gross misunderstanding of the ruminant carbon cycle.

Ruminants have always emitted methane; it is not something new. Huge herds of wild buffalo, cattle, goats, sheep, deer, cameloids and wildebeest have grazed the grasslands of the world for millions of years. The American prairies once supported greater numbers of bison than they now do cattle, despite the intensive corn and soy production that feeds them.

Methane emissions from wild ruminants was never a problem because nature does not permit waste — the methane was used as food for methanotrophic bacteria in the soil and neutralised. It was never a problem until agricultural practices started destroying these methanotrophic bacteria, which are very sensitive to chemical fertilisers and herbicides. These bacteria reactivate in biologically managed soil.

However, methane is not the whole picture. When the contribution of livestock to soil carbon sequestration is taken into account it is easy to see that ruminants do not increase greenhouse gases if they are managed well.

Grassland soils are the greatest sequesters of carbon — greater than forests. In the top one metre of soils in temperate grasslands there is an average of 236 tonnes of carbon, compared to 96 in temperate forest soils and 80 in cropland.

Keep Reading in Green Left Weekly

Growing our way out of climate change by building with hemp and wood fibre

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Author: Mike Lawrence

How can buildings help with climate change? It’s all about renewables and “sequestered carbon”.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills’ 2010 report on Low Carbon Construction concluded that construction was responsible for around 300m tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, which is almost 47% of the UK’s total. Of this, around 50m tonnes is embedded in the fabric of buildings.

Making one tonne of steel emits 1.46 tonnes of CO2 and 198kg of CO2 is emitted make one tonne of reinforced concrete. One square meter of timber framed, hemp-lime wall (weighing 120kg), after allowing for the energy cost of transporting and assembling the materials actually stores 35.5kg of CO2.

If we can convert plants into building materials, we are in a win-win situation. Plants use the energy of the sun to convert atmospheric CO2 and water into hydrocarbons – the material from which plants are made.

The plant acts as a carbon store, sequestering (absorbing) atmospheric CO2 for as long as the plant continues to exist. This CO2 is only re-released when the material is composted or burnt, and the great thing is that through replanting it you can re-absorb this CO2 annually, in the case of straw or hemp, or every decade or so in the case of timber, rather than the 300m years that it takes to recycle coal or oil.

Keep Reading in The Guardian

Michael Pollan: What You Should Eat to Be Healthy

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Author: Cole Mellino

A new documentary from Kikim Media based on Michael Pollan’s bestselling book, In Defense of Food, helps consumers navigate a food system complicated by globalization and industrialization.

“I’ve been writing about the food system for a very long time,” Pollan said in the trailer for the new film. “But what I kept hearing from readers was ‘yeah yeah yeah, you told me where the food comes from and how the animals live and everything, but what I want to know is what should I eat.’”

In the film, Pollan attempts to answer that very question: What should I eat to be healthy? He addresses what he has called the “American paradox: the more we worry about nutrition, the less healthy we seem to become.”

We’re consuming “edible food-like substances” rather than actual food, Pollan said. By actual food, he means the food people ate for thousands of years before we became dependent on processed foods.

“You don’t have to be a scientist to know how to eat,” said Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University. “Just go around the outside of the supermarket and pick up fruits, vegetables and meat, and stay out of the processed foods, because they’re fun to eat once in a while, but they shouldn’t be daily fare.”

Keep Reading on Alternet

Life in Syntropy

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[ English | Português ]

“Life in Syntropy” is the new short film from Agenda Gotsch made specially to be presented at COP21 – Paris. This film put together some of the most remarkable experiences in Syntropic Agriculture, with brand new images and interviews.

Watch More Video’s on Agenda Gotsch’s Youtube Channel

5 Ways to Reverse Climate Change Right Now

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Author: Maria Rodale

The Paris Climate Conference (known as COP21) is finally taking place, bringing with it that strange mix of hope mingled with despair. Everyone seems to have his or her own personal agenda (including me) for how the conference should play out—and how we can save ourselves from a climate disaster.

Organizations from all over the globe are bringing to Paris their diverse messages about what should be done: from renewable energy to nuclear; from eating no meat to eating less meat; from super-high-tech solutions to going back to simpler ways. Unfortunately, many leaders are still thinking 20 years out when it comes to climate change—as if we have all the time in the world. And while each of the solutions proposed at COP21 might be essential in the long run, none of them alone is enough RIGHT NOW to make a difference.

However, there is one thing that we can do RIGHT NOW that can not only reverse climate change, but also let all the players pursue their own agendas in peace. We must and can immediately restore the soil’s ability to store carbon. It’s pretty simple, actually. And it’s proven to work.

Here are 5 ways to make that happen right now:

1. Transition all agriculture to organic regenerative agriculture. Numerous studies have shown that organic agriculture restores the ability of the soil to store carbon. Not only is organic agriculture both productive and profitable, but it’s also healthier for everyone, and it doesn’t use petroleum-based fertilizers and chemicals. Note, keeping the soil covered in plant life at all times is essential to carbon storage. That means cover crops! Oh, and bonus: People around the world are demanding organic, so there’s a giant market for what organic regenerative agriculture produces that is just waiting to be filled. (By the way, that means raising animals organically and using as much high tech as you want.)

2. Protect and preserve all wilderness areas, especially forests. Nature knows what to do—forests naturally store tons of carbon. Forests model what agriculture is learning: that nature knows how to protect itself and us if we protect the patterns enabling plants, trees, insects, fungus, birds, and animals to do the work to store carbon.

3. Plant more trees, forests, and gardens. No space should be left bare. Every open space is an opportunity to store carbon in the form of plants, trees, gardens, and healthy soil. Be it by planting a garden or by letting something go wild and “back to nature,” the important thing is to allow the soil to build and grow and do its work.

Keep Reading in Maria’s Farm Country Kitchen

COP21 – Carbon Farming May Figure in Climate Mitigation

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Author: Judith Schwartz

PARIS – Due to an initiative launched by France, there is now an international framework that for the first time brings agricultural soils into climate negotiations. Called “4 per 1000,” this new proposal aims to protect and increase carbon stocks in soil.

The initiative, signed this week by 25 countries including France, Germany, the UK, Mexico and Australia, as well as 75 research and NGO partners, is aimed at combatting climate change by recognizing the ability of soil to act as a sink for greenhouse-gas emissions. The US was not a signatory to the agreement, which occurred parallel to the main climate negotiations.

The “4 per 1000,” which refers to a voluntary pledge of a 0.4 percent annual growth rate in soil carbon content, “is a game-changer”, said Andre Leu, who signed on behalf of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM). “I’ve been engaged with climate negotiations since Copenhagen, and until now we couldn’t even get the word agriculture in the agreements.”

Carbon is an important component of soil, representing 58 percent of organic matter. Through photosynthesis, a plant draws down atmospheric carbon to form carbon compounds, or sugars. Some of this is exuded through the roots to feed soil microorganisms. But when soil is exposed to the air, through tillage or the absence of plant cover, the carbon oxidizes to form CO2. The world’s cultivated soils have lost between 50 and 70 percent of their original carbon stores, according to Rattan Lal, director of Ohio State University’s Carbon Management and Sequestration Center.

Keep Reading in FERN

The MIF and GESGIAP will implement a mechanism to compensate Mexican producers for soil carbon capture and to mitigate climate change

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[ Español ]

The Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), member of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Group recently approved a US $845,000 for a project with the Sierra Gorda Ecological Group, I.A.P (GESGIAP). The project will seek to enhance the capacity of 5,000 small-scale producers and market gardeners to mitigate and adapt to climate change through the transfer of a holistic management approach that will allow them to regenerate the soil, improve productivity and generate ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration and water infiltration.  The adoption of the holistic approach will also help them increase their income, lower costs for inputs and get compensation for carbon sequestration in the soil.

Soil degradation in Mexico affects two out of three hectares, resulting in a loss of 10% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This issue is affected by weather events like floods, droughts and changes in the frequency and intensity of rain, but the main cause of soil degradation in the country (35%) is associated with agricultural and livestock activities. The agricultural sector is regarded as one of the main contributors to the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) but at the same time the sector has significant potential for mitigating climate change.  According to the Special Climate Change Program 2014-2018 for Mexico, by 2020 the agricultural sector will be the fifth leading GHG emitter in the country, accounting for 14% of emissions. The program’s main strategies include the implementation of sustainable agricultural, forestry, and fishery practices that reduce emissions and the vulnerability of ecosystems and the development of instruments to promote their implementation.

The approved project aims to address this problem through three actions. First, it will build awareness, train and provide technical assistance to producers through workshops, the establishment of demonstration pilots, the development of grazing plans as well as regional and national forums that facilitate exchanges of knowledge between peers. Second, a measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) system will be designed and implemented to promote transparency in the actions of mitigation attributed to the adoption of the holistic management methodology (monitoring soil carbon sequestration and biological recovery). Third, once the mitigation actions are verified, small-scale producers will be compensated, for their use of the holistic methodology, by a sub-national mechanism that will channel resources from environmental taxes to make the payment for environmental services to small producers. Additionally, these compensations will be offered to companies and/or individuals that wish to neutralize or mitigate their carbon footprint through an online platform.

Keep Reading on the Multilateral Investment Fund’s Website

IFOAM Organics International: Why the French “4 Per 1000” Initiative?

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France officially launches the “4 per 1000 Initiative” to combat climate change and feed the world through regenerative agriculture.

This video features Stéphane Le Foll, the French Minister of Agriculture and Andre Leu, President of IFOAM Organics International explaining the importance of the French “4 per 1000” Initiative to reverse climate change by sequestering carbon in the soil.

Check out the latest updates on the “4 per 1000” Initiative.

Watch More Videos on Regeneration International’s YouTube Channel

Soil as Carbon Storehouse: New Weapon in Climate Fight?

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Author: Judith D. Schwartz

The degradation of soils from unsustainable agriculture and other development has released billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. But new research shows how effective land restoration could play a major role in sequestering CO2 and slowing climate change.

In the 19th century, as land-hungry pioneers steered their wagon trains westward across the United States, they encountered a vast landscape of towering grasses that nurtured deep, fertile soils.

Today, just three percent of North America’s tall grass prairie remains. Its disappearance has had a dramatic impact on the landscape and ecology of the U.S., but a key consequence of that transformation has largely been overlooked: a massive loss of soil carbon into the atmosphere. The importance of soil carbon — how it is leached from the earth and how that process can be reversed — is the subject of intensifying scientific investigation, with important implications for the effort to slow the rapid rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The world’s cultivated soils have lost 50 to 70 percent of their original carbon stock.

According to Rattan Lal, director of Ohio State University’s Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, the world’s cultivated soils have lost between 50 and 70 percent of their original carbon stock, much of which has oxidized upon exposure to air to become CO2. Now, armed with rapidly expanding knowledge about carbon sequestration in soils, researchers are studying how land restoration programs in places like the former North American prairie, the North China Plain, and even the parched interior of Australia might help put carbon back into the soil.

Absent carbon and critical microbes, soil becomes mere dirt, a process of deterioration that’s been rampant around the globe. Many scientists say that regenerative agricultural practices can turn back the carbon clock, reducing atmospheric CO2 while also boosting soil productivity and increasing resilience to floods and drought. Such regenerative techniques include planting fields year-round in crops or other cover, and agroforestry that combines crops, trees, and animal husbandry.

“CO2 cannot be reduced to safe levels in time to avoid serious long-term impacts unless the other side of atmospheric CO2 balance is included,” says Thomas J. Goreau, a biogeochemist and expert on carbon and nitrogen cycles who now serves as president of the Global Coral Reef Alliance.

Keep Reading on Yale Environment 360